Having enjoyed Oats work before and seeing as I enjoy horror of all varieties I found this short story collection to be a let down. The way in which the stories are "haunted" is more academic and there really isn't a grotesque about it (although you can feel it trying really hard at times to come across as 19 century gothic).
It wasn't poorly written I was just let down from what I was expecting by the blurb and title and for that reason I gave it only two stars. ( )

Extremely well written stories that often had very disappointing endings. I often felt "let down" after each tale. Still, the 5 offerings that make up Part III were my favorites of the collection. And a quick heads up - "grotesque" has many meanings! I, mistakenly in this case, thought it meant "gross" or "disgusting". It has other meanings too! ( )

What is horrible to us, men and women, in all stages of life? It's not stupid college kids who always go where they shouldn't who face the most terrible stuff in these short stories. It's a young woman with an unwanted pregnancy and very little money to get rid of it. It's a boy and girl who find more love from a dead governess than a live one. It's a man whose wife's cat decides not to like him any more.

If the first stories don't seem to be very scary, stick with them. They get worse (or better depending on how you look at it). ( )

Joyce Carol Oates' Haunted is an excellent collection of stories that, for the lack of a better word, are "scary". However, these are not "scary" in the sense that Edgar Allan Poe or H.P Lovecraft are. These tales are much more like the plot of an episode of Twilight Zone with a twist at the end. As other reviewers have stated, her stories range from traditional scary stories that could to told on Halloween, to creepy tales with psychological implications, to horrific passages of violence.

The majority of the tales center around the relationship between a woman/girl and an abusive man. In most of the stories, the man and woman are related to each other though sometimes it takes a while to figure out their relationship. Though when reading these stories for the first time, the plots and characters may seem harmless. The terrifying elements lay just below the surface. Unlike in other scary story collections, Oates rarely shows the reader what is exactly to be feared. Instead, she describes and fear and panic surrounding the event and lets the reader infer. This technique makes the tales even more grotesque and horrific because there is no defined conclusion and it is up to the reader's imagination.

Oates also uses a variety of techniques that have become familiar to her readers. In one story, she begins each sentence with the word "because" which makes the tale almost seem like a free verse poem. Another story is segmented with each passage numbered as if the entire story is a list of some sort.

Though descriptions of the tales may sound interesting, the majority of the stories are incredibly upsetting. Instead of murderous hitchhikers or clawed murderers, these are stories that burrow deep into the reader's psyche and wreck havoc. These are not for readings around a campfire or for someone who wants chills on Halloween. The kinds of chills that these stories give are far deeper and are not easily ignored. ( )

I was interested in reading something in the spirit of the season (Halloween) so I picked up this book of short stories, which ranged from creepy to downright disgusting. As an author, Joyce Carol Oates shows an uncanny ability to come up with strikingly different situations within which she weaves remarkable tales. With Oates, you never know what you're going to get because each story is completely different than the one before.

However, what is the same about each of the stories in this book is the underlying mood of confusion and panic. Whether it was the story about a successful university president surprised to find the exact replica of her childhood dollhouse on a street in Lancaster County or the one about the dead governess and valet haunting the children they loved and cared for in life, the reader never feels completely sure of the circumstances or clear about the story that is unfolding. The teacher in me couldn't help but think, as I was reading the book, that it would be a great one with which to teach the skill of making inferences (although it is most certainly not appropriate for kids of any age).

A few of my favorite stories were The White Cat and The Model. In The White Cat a man in his fifties develops an intense hatred for his (much younger) wife's white Persian cat. He makes multiple attempts to kill the cat yet somehow the cat continues to "haunt" him. In The Model a 17-year-old runner is approached by an artist in the park. He offers her a great deal of money to pose as his model for a picture. During these modeling sessions, the girl becomes convinced that this stranger is actually the father whom she has long believed to be dead. But, as the reader, you're never quite convinced that this is true...

There are sixteen stories in this book, but many of them were too distressing for me to consider enjoyable. While I admire Oates' writing abilities and these stories were definitely creepy, I found more of them upsetting than entertaining. In the end the final story, especially, turned my stomach enough to turn me off completely. ( )