Cardiff, by the Sea - 4 novellas by Joyce Carol Oates

Cardiff, by the Sea - by Joyce Carol Oates - Grove Atlantic

Cardiff, by the Sea is a collection of four novellas by renowned author Joyce Carol Oates. She is actually considered one of the best American living authors - and one of the most prolific.

 

In Oates's world, there is often a definite separation between men and women. Women are often suffering victims - of men, of their families, of society. Men are most of the time deceivious beings, untrustworthy, driven by a homicidal and violent instinct.

In her world, reality and dreams (or nightmares) have no well-defined borders and characters keep floating from one into another creating an almost gothic - foggy - atmosphere. The result is often subtly disturbing.

So in the first novella - which gives the title to the entire collection - Clare is a 30-year old art historian, living her life in a sort of bubble, where human relationships are necessities to be handled with care and not too much involvement. Her attitute towards life has been shaped by her being adopted. She feels and acts like an outsider because the trouble with being adopted is that you are always provisional. No matter your age, you are at risk of being sent back.

Her philosophy and mental construction are shaken one day, when she receives a phone call on the landline and, even not knowing the identity of the caller, decides to answer. This decision, one in contrast with her usual policy, will trigger a series of events that will lead Clare - and the readers with her - into an almost nightmarish vortex. Will she wake up?

The second novella, Miao Dao, relates the difficult adolescent life of 13-year-old Mia. Parents divorcing and remarrying, boys noticing her for her changing body at school and bullying her, her stepdad not turning out as good as it seemed. Her only pleasure comes from a colony of feral cats that, to her dismay, is eradicated by the department for public health. She rescues though a small kitten, baptizing her Miao Dao, for which she develops an intimate attachment made of (mutual) protection. So intimate that, even when it escapes, it keeps coming back, visiting her in her sleep, protecting her - or is it just her dreams? 

Mia is suffering as a teenager, her mother is suffering as an adult woman. They both need to adapt to changes in their lives, and they find different ways to cope with it - be it alcohol or ...cats. Relying on men is never the answer. Men are insensitive beings at the best (Mia's father), violent at the worst (Mia's stepfather). And they are essentially so from the start. The guys in school are little bullies. The stepdad is just their adult version.

In Phantomwise, Alyce is just nineteen and falls for the wrong man (is there a right one, though?). The game Oates plays between reality and dream/nightmare is even more explicit here with the continuous reference to Alice in Wonderland. Ghosts get more real than in the previous two novellas, preparing the field for the last one, The surviving child, where a house is actually haunted. In this novella, Elizabeth marries a widower, only to found out that dark secrets are hidden in  the house they live in. Again, no surprise, evil is hidden under the surface of an apparently perfect husband. 

 

All four pieces have female characters as protagonists, all sharing an intense mental activity - they think and brood more than they speak. They drift in and out of sleep; what happens in their lives might belong to this world or to a parallel reality. This state of constant chaos and uncertainty is quite disturbing, just as disturbing are the often bloody secrets hidden under the surface.

 

Oates has fun building a constant internal dialogue between the narrator and the protagonist, through the use of brackets - leaving always floating the doubt that one of them is not fully reliable.

 

If you like "disturbing", this collection is definitely for you.

(This book will be published in October, 2020 - I got an ARC through Edelweiss)