[phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 138: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 150: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 151: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 152: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 153: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 154: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 155: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 156: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 157: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 158: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 159: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 160: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/book.php on line 161: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4130: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3009) [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4130: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3009) [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4130: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3009) [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4130: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3009) The Internet Book Database of Fiction - Detailed view for the Book: Last Days (Collection)
Long established in the front rank of contemporary American authors, Joyce Carol Oates is virtually unrivaled in the breadth and diversity of her achievements. Last Days reaffirms her continuing commitment to the short story, the form which first brought her to prominence in the early 1960s and which she has practiced since then with an ever-deepening mastery. The eleven stories here, ranging from the realistic to the fantastic, reflect with uncanny perception the seismic disturbances of life in the present. These stories are, as one would expect from their author, intensely dramatic and irresistibly readable, but what sets them apart is her genius for imagining the lives of her characters. A little girl who has witnessed a murder; a fragile, simple-minded woman deserted by her husband; a brilliant college student edging toward the brink of insanity; an American intellectual visiting in Poland, so closely identifying with "My Warszawa" that she finds her own sense of identity slipping away; a diplomat who returns to the United States defiled by his experiences in a poverty-stricken North African country -- all are evoked with compelling authenticity. Oates persuades us that this is how they must be. We are in the presence of an author whose vision of life becomes our own.