Book Review: "Dis Mem Ber" by Joyce Carol Oates

Yes, it's another book of Joyce Carol Oates' short stories and of course, they are still weird and conceptually terrifying. Currently, we are in the first few weeks of July and I have to say, the climate in England is becoming unbearable more and more often. This is what happens when you don't recycle and you let rich people dart around in private jets. We get climate change. I think we do have to admit everywhere that it is heating up - I definitely do not like this at all. Everything is just sticky and hot and as you know, in England, we do not have air conditioning in homes 99% of the time. Anyways, on to the book...

The title story is about an eleven-year-old girl named Jill who has an older cousin named Rowan. In a blue chevy, Rowan takes Jill to a creek where there lies a corpse. Forcing her to photograph it, we realise that as the gruesome murders take place, Rowan vanishes leaving Jill terrified. As the police close in, Jill is definitely worried about her cousin, also worried about the notion that he may continue if not caught. But ultimately, she decides to lie to the police about everything. The seduction of violence and loyalty to her cousin are far too strong, but yet she is also young. Joyce Carol Oates gives us one of her more relevant ethical dilemmas in which family members who know crimes have been committed often stay silent out of loyalty to another family member.

Another story is called The Crawl Space and involves a widow named Brianna who becomes enamoured and obsessed by her late-husband's home though it's been seven years' since his death. She enters the crawl space and sees something haunting - this means she also must confront things about her husband's life she didn't even fully know. I love how Joyce Carol Oates weaves this extremely eerie atmosphere with the fate of finding out something worse, it crescendos into this tension which means it is far more than just an ethical dilemma - it also genuinely frightens our main character and we feel that too.

There's another story which deals with ethical dilemmas in an even more shocking way and that one is called Heartbreak. It's about Stephanie, she's 13 and the sister of the very conventionally attractive Caitlin. They also have a very conventionally attractive cousin named Hunt. Stephanie however, as you can probably tell, is not conventionally attractive and therefore feels invisible. It is then that Stephanie, drunk on her own power, recalls her stepfather's gun - her intent is to scare Caitlin with it. However, something much worse happens which leaves Stephanie fully visible and suffering the moral fallout of her actions for that short time - until she isn't. The word 'consequences' doesn't really describe it.

The Drowned Girl is another great story. It starts with a girl named Miri Krim who was found dead in a water tank having been there for eleven days. A transfer student named Alida Lucash is trying to prove that Miri's death was not, in fact, a suicide like previously believed. Alida begins to investigate what happened in the case and uncovers strange things such as: how the faculty are trying to erase Miri's memory upon campus. But something much more worrying is how Alida starts to lose her own identity and grasp on reality as the investigation keeps going. Obsession and grief lead her down a path of self-destruction and of course, JCO writes it brilliantly.

Joyce Carol Oates obviously fills her book with moral dilemmas, but there are stories that don't quite match that atmosphere such as Welcome to Friendly Skies! which reads like a safety announcement before a plane journey. As the announcement goes on, the phrasing becomes more bizarre and unexpected, directed at a birdwatching crew who have boarded the plane. This one, I think was supposed to be dark comedy but I don't think it came off as anything more than simply peculiar as this is not what we tend to get from this author. It's the only story I can say didn't really fit with the rest of them and therefore, to put it at the end of the anthology was not a great idea.

All in all, there are many things to adore out of this anthology and yet, I don't think I've covered all of the stories. It's probably not her greatest anthology but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read it.