Dear Husband, by Joyce Carol Oates (2009)

Oates' output in short stories can be extremely variable in terms of quality. This is thankfully one of the good volumes. As will be familiar to any interested reader, her style is very firm, really quite surprisingly formal. This can sometimes weigh a little heavy in her novels. Her stories can be stunning when she gets it really right; the strength and wire of the formality makes the shorter form really punch. I'm glad to say that this happens several times in this volume. In her realist vein, the gritty Landfill catalogues a life almost as an amplification of yet-another-newspaper-statistic, most categorised by its death. The confusions and Ice Storm-like story of well-heeled eroticised family secrets in Cutty Sark marks the memory. Two tales of mothers, The Heart Sutra and Dear Husband,, detail desperation, loneliness, need and abandonment in the lives of women who put too much faith in their men, and the arms' length avoidance tactics of alpha males in situations in which they find themselves trapped. Both end horrifically. In one story in particular Oates goes for something different - and it's a pleasure to hear the alteration in that firm voice. The wry, sour-mouthed humour of Suicide by Fitness Center, put into the mouth of a fascinated, cynical and nervously vulnerable older woman is a joy. This one has a fault which two others also have: a slightly damp squib ending. Endings are always critical and a good amount of the time Oates "gets" their value. Not virtually perfect, as was her 2004 collection I Am No One You Know, but still a fine entry in the Oates canon.