The Frenzy

Table of Contents

The Frenzy

The Frenzy is the latest collection of short stories from bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates to be checked off my to be read list. If you aren’t familiar with her writing, scroll to the bottom of this review to find more of my thoughts on her writing and reviews.

Joyce Carol Oates is easily one of my favorite authors. I’ve been collecting and reading her books since I was a sophomore in high school when I first read We Were the Mulvaneys. I was hooked on her writing style from there. Needless to say, I am absolutely thrilled to be reading and sharing The Frenzy with you.

This post contains affiliate links

This year I have been making it more of a point to read my favorite authors instead of going with trends. Life is short, so read the best books! Which is a goal of mine, to check more of my favorites off my to be read list and not just shuffle them around on the list. The Frenzy was a natural choice for my next read.

This means that you will see far more Joyce Carol Oates reviews in the near future, both of her newest writing, and her older stuff as well. This will be along with several other of my favorite authors. I’m calling this year my year of favorites for book reviews.

One of the things I’ve always admired about Oates is her writing style. She isn’t afraid to confront dark and taboo subjects. But she doesn’t romanticize them either. Fox still sticks in my brain, and I read it last summer. Because it gave me the ending I think should happen to everyone who is like Francis Fox. Her writing is not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure.

This also means that I’m never really prepared for her books, because I don’t know what to expect. This is part of the adventure for me. I know The Frenzy and all of her stories will be something great, and cause me to feel a variety of emotions along the way. Her books always make me feel a range of emotions as I’m reading.

Do you have any favorite or auto-buy authors? I have several, with Joyce Carol Oates being at the top of that list.

Have you read The Frenzy? Come on in and let me tell you about it!

About The Frenzy

Frenzy (noun): a temporary madness; a violent mental or emotional agitation; intense usually wild and often disorderly compulsive or agitated activity

Joyce Carol Oates is a master of the short story and one of the legends of the form. Her collections of short fiction have twice been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and have won numerous awards, including the O. Henry Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Art of the Short Story. In The Frenzy: Stories, Oates plunges us into the lives of her characters at moments of crisis and confusion, when much of what they understand about themselves and those they love comes undone.

A young woman on a supposedly romantic weekend trip to Cape May, New Jersey, turns the tables on her older, married lover. A freak bicycle accident on a bridge haunts one family for decades. A girl jealous of her popular cousin discovers she is the lucky one. A widow waits at her riverside house for her dead husband’s return. A young man hiking in the woods comes upon a couple in a heated, possibly violent argument—should he intervene?

Suspenseful and psychologically astute, Oates’s short stories enthrall and captivate as they dissect her character’s deepest fears—revealing our own in turn. “Literature is a texture of words,” says Oates of her short fiction, “evoking life in the most vivid ways—psychologically, physically.” These new stories blazingly evoke life at its most vivid and perilous, when fate and free will intersect, and one ominous encounter or bad choice can be the difference between an ordinary day and the point of no return.

Thoughts on The Frenzy

The Frenzy

“Always a jolt when he sees the girl with the streaked-blond hair, futile to dwell upon how he distrusts her. For the fatal fact is, he’s crazy about her.”
Joyce Carol Oates, The Frenzy

In The Frenzy we meet Cassidy and Brianna. Cassidy is a middle-aged man and Brianna is much younger at nineteen. Cassidy falls in love with Brianna, despite being married, having built an entire life with a career, kids, and everything else everyone does.

Then he goes and buys Brianna everything she wants, a condo, clothes, and so much more. But it all comes crashing down one night when everything changes.

Cassidy was played hard by Brianna, and she leaves him alone with nothing, just to disappear in the end.

The Frenzy feels complete, yet I want so much more from it. Which is the sign of a good short story. I really wanted to see what happened at the end, and what happened with Cassidy and Brianna. Where did Brianna go? How did Cassidy handle it? Did he finally leave his wife even without Brianna? I have so many questions, even though the end made perfect sense. This could have easily become a full novel.

The Frenzy originally appeared in The New Yorker.

The Fear

“Asked if they were twins they’d learned to smile but say no. Juliet always said no. Janette wasn’t so sure, Janette only shook her head no, she was shy around adults always leaning over to bring their huge faces too close.”
Joyce Carol Oates, The Frenzy

In The Fear we meet Janette and Juliet. They are cousins, and very close as small children. But that all changes one day when Juliet is diagnosed with cancer,, and life as Janette knew it ceases to exist.

This is such a heartbreaking story for many reasons. One, children shouldn’t have cancer. Period. But cancer doesn’t discriminate, unfortunately. It attacks anyone, of any age, race, and gender. It doesn’t matter. But it always breaks my heart because kids should have a chance to be kids, not forced to grow up and deal with adult things at such a young age.

Janette is jealous of Juliet, as she is prettier, has better clothes, and many more things. But in reality Janette is the lucky one, being able to live a normal life free from the challenges that Janette must face. Ultimately, this tears them apart and that bond they once shared is forever destroyed.

I found I really hated Janette’s parents, especially her mother. Because they kept the kids separated for so long that when Janette finally does see Juliet again, she is not only a stranger, but a terrifying freak to her. This isn’t surprising, given that they are kids.

Janette is lucky, absolutely. She lives a cancer-free life. But at the same time, because of Juliet’s issues, she is basically forgotten. How truly lucky can Janette be when she becomes invisible to her own parents because of Juliet? I found myself really identifying with her, and feeling equally sad for her as well as Juliet.

The Fear originally appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review.

The Bicycle Accident

“Arlette, the children’s mother, took care never to allude to the accident on the bridge in that way. She never blamed Evie. She’d never have blamed any of the children in such circumstances, she’d been so grateful that her daughter was alive.”
Joyce Carol Oates, The Frenzy

The Bicycle Accident has a very We Were The Mulvaneys vibe for me. I have no idea if Joyce Carol Oates meant it to be that way, but it definitely reminded me of that book. It was different, don’t worry. It wasn’t the same characters or even situation. But it simply felt written in the same voice.

This is the longest story in the book so far, and I found that I liked it. It was still short, not a full novel. Yet felt complete at the same time. Evie made sense to me as a character, and I could certainly identify with her.

I also had questions, because it left the imagination running. Was Rob Nash Evie’s father? Is that what prompted her to take off when she was ultimately in her bicycle accident? Did he do something like sexually assault her when they left together before the accident? I have many questions that were not answered in the book. They didn’t need to be, but certain references make me think some of these things happened, and it certainly allowed for my imagination to wander.

What stood out to me the most is that we’ve all had experiences that changed our lives, and there is absolutely no going back to who we were prior to that experience. That was the bicycle accident for Evie and her family. Obviously every experience is different for everyone, but we’ve all been there and can relate.

The Bicycle Accident originally appeared at The New Yorker website.

The Call

“It is five forty-three AM when she leaves the house. Seeing in the digital clock in the stove, radium-glimmering numerals.”
Joyce Carol Oates, The Frenzy

The Call reminded me so much of myself when my own father died. I was also young, and sometimes it felt like a dream. I had to stop reading and take a small break once I was done with this story, and just sit with the emotions that it stirred. Because I remember that life-changing moment when I was pulled out of school.

This story reads almost like a dream, where S. is dreaming that her father hadn’t really died until later on in life, and then she’s dreaming she gets the call and he has been alive the entire time.

It is much shorter read in comparison to The Bicycle Accident, so there wasn’t much character development or real ending. It was a good story, but definitely not my personal favorite. It reminded me of Zombie and Black Water, where it feels like a weird bad dream in many ways.

The Call originally appeared in Fiction.

The Return

“My friend was a widow, not really old but already a widow twice.”
Joyce Carol Oates, The Frenzy

The Return is a cautionary tale of the battles people faced from isolation during Covid. In fact, I remember having discussions with my husband about exactly that, and how isolating it was to people who were already struggling. All isolation did was exacerbate their ongoing struggles in many ways.

I also found that I identified with Maude a lot, when she talked about it being hard to talk to people after being isolated for so long. Phone calls don’t bother me. But I found once things started to open up again and I would go out, I had no idea how to talk to people anymore. I’m introverted by nature, but could always fake conversations and be social when I needed to. Those days were suddenly gone.

Overly cheerful salespeople in stores would cause me to almost shut down. I couldn’t handle their invasive questions of, “what brings you in today?” Or, “how’s your day going? Anything new and exciting?” I’d let my husband field those questions and just walk away.

This is what made me relate to Maude when she went to visit her friend Audra after Audra’s husband died. Audra was obviously struggling and in a downward spiral. It was anxiety-inducing to read through her spiral. But that is classic Joyce Carol Oates at its finest right there.

The Return originally appeared in Harper’s Magazine.

The Redwoods

“How “voices” haunt us when we are alone. How memories wash over us in solitude. The only remedy, Vanbrugh thought, was more solitude – more silence.”
Joyce Carol Oates, The Frenzy

The Redwoods, much like The Bicycle Accident, is a longer story. This one deals with grief as a widow mourns her husband. But was their life a lie? Did it just look surface-level good for everyone to see?

The Redwoods also examines our choices. The way we as humans tend to obsess over a choice we made. What if we had done something different? Then imagining the scenarios and how they would go. The Redwoods is classic overthinking at its finest.

I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t feel much of a connection or too many emotions when it came to this story. I recognized that overthinking was something I once did constantly, and I’m really glad I was able to break that cycle. But that’s about it for me. This was a good story and beautifully written, but it wasn’t my personal favorite from this collection.

THe Redwoods originally appeared in American Short Fiction.

Small Veins

“Your manner in the blood lab should remain reticent, formal. The focus of your determination is not-fainting.”
Joyce Carol Oates, The Frenzy

Small Veins is the story of a woman going to the doctor. Which does not seem like anything spectacular. Phlebotomists struggle all the time with small veins in people. Personally, I think they should all be paramedics first, because they get it right the first time, as time counts. But I digress.

This story takes a darker turn, as the patient struggles with her cancer diagnosis, the death of her husband, and sudden fainting spells. The fainting spells seem to be the biggest issue with the patient, as she can’t fake that everything is fine when she’s unconscious in a place she shouldn’t be unconscious.

Her doctor recognizes the internal struggle going on inside her, and he tells her a story about his daughter dying by suicide. It is sad, heartbreaking, and certainly makes you stop and think about life and how fragile it really is.

It is also interesting that the patient is realizing her doctor’s story isn’t a cautionary tale. It is a suggestion. This point is driven home when he wants to see her for another checkup in three months instead of the usual six.

Small Veins originally appeared in Fictionable (UK).

Refuge

“That look of molten lava, too thick to run swiftly – you’d think. Raindrops like bullets on the rough surface of the water, like life quickening beneath the surface…”
Joyce Carol Oates, The Frenzy

As I read Refuge, I found myself annoyed with Lorene. When Marcus goes “missing” for over a month, she does absolutely nothing. Afraid of what everything may think. My husband and I are so predictable in our daily lives that I would fully expect that if either of us are gone for more than a couple hours past what is normal, we’d be sounding alarms and waving red flags. So for Lorene to wait over a month to hear from Marcus seems insane.

Then when she finally goes to find him, he’s obviously having a mental health crisis. Although he probably was prior to going missing and she just didn’t realize it.

As the story progressed, I could see the outcome coming like a freight train from a mile away. I probably watch too many true crime shows when I’m not reading. It’s rare I’m right when predicting how a story will end, and I hate when I’m right. Especially when it comes to a story written by Joyce Carol Oates.

This is easily my least favorite story out of all of them. So many previously made me experience a range of emotions, and this one just annoyed me. I wanted some magical mic drop moment that shocked me. Instead I was given predictable results. Because I was given that mic drop moment in several of the other stories, and I kept waiting for it here.

This doesn’t mean it was a bad story. It just wasn’t my personal favorite. It was beautifully written in the way only Joyce Carol Oates can do. This is the beauty of writing. It is a subjective art that isn’t going to please everyone.

Refuge originally appeared in Zyzzyva.

Night Fishing at Antibes

“We are all fishing in dark waters, at night. Each in our own groping way.”
Joyce Carol Oates, The Frenzy

In Night Fishing at Antibes we meet Meghan and Zahira. These are two neighbors who are widowed, and become best friends afterward. Although they were not the best of friends prior to that. They had the same circle of friends and acquaintances, sure. But they were not exactly friends.

I am still struggling to articulate my thoughts on this story. It did not go in the direction that I expected it to, and I love that fact. The ending was anxiety inducing to say the least.

My favorite story in this book is The Bicycle Accident, but Night Fishing at Antibes is a close second. Because this was a rollercoaster ride with twists I wasn’t anticipating. I thought the ending was brilliant. Slightly insane in a very Heath Ledger/Joker way, and that was probably why I liked it so much. Chaos without any real meaning or intent other than causing chaos and inciting fear into others.

Night Fishing at Antibes — TK.

Final Thoughts on The Frenzy

I’m calling The Frenzy a five star read. Obviously there were stories within The Frenzy that I enjoyed more than others, as it is with any short story collection. It is hard not to compare them all together. But they all had me captivated.

The Frenzy fully earns that name and lives up to it. Each story was delivered with its own unease, suspense, emotional intensity, and anxiety over what will happen next. These stories forced me to take breaks in between each of them, to both absorb the message and sit with my own feelings around them and the characters. That is what quality writing should do, it should invoke emotions, memories, break you, heal you.

The Frenzy really is Joyce Carol Oates at her finest. Reading The Frenzy is like being on a burning rollercoaster because she can evoke so many emotions with her stories, and she does exactly that here. I wasn’t sure she could top Fox, after reading that and feeling all kinds of emotions along the way. But she knocked this one out of the park.

If you are a fan of short stories, or a longtime admirer of Joyce Carol Oates, you will absolutely want to order a copy of The Frenzy. These stories are some that despite being short, you will not likely forget anytime soon. I know I won’t forget them either.

Discussion

Have you read The Frenzy or any other writing from bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates? Are you a fan? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

About the Author

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of more than 70 books, including novels, short story collections, poetry volumes, plays, essays, and criticism, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde.

Among her many honors are the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National Book Award. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Joyce Carol Oates is the recipient of a National Humanities Medal awarded by President Barack Obama, the National Book Critics Circle’s Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award in Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina Etranger, and the Cino Del Duca World Prize.

She has written some of the more enduring fiction of our time, including the bestsellers Blone and We Were the Mulvaneys.

She is the Roger S. Berlind ‘52 Distinguished Professor of the Humanities Emerita at Princeton University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2024 she received the Prix Fitzgerald and the Raymond Chandler Award for lifetime achievement given to a “master of the thriller and noir literary genre.”

Purchasing The Frenzy

If you are interested in buying the hardcover version of The Frenzy, click here.
Click here for the Kindle version.
Click here for my favorite Kindle I currently own.

Amazon Notice

The Reading Wife is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com, at no added cost to you.

The Frenzy

The Frenzy

About The Frenzy

Thoughts on The Frenzy

The Frenzy

The Fear

The Bicycle Accident

The Call

The Return

The Redwoods

Small Veins

Refuge

Night Fishing at Antibes

Final Thoughts on The Frenzy

Discussion

About the Author

Purchasing The Frenzy

More from Joyce Carol Oates

Amazon Notice

Leave a Reply Cancel reply