World Literary Awards

← Back to awarded works
Marriages and Infidelities

O. Henry Award

Marriages and Infidelities

Joyce Carol Oates

A dark, introspective story in which death, marriage, and literary ambition press on the narrator’s sense of self. Its atmosphere is uneasy and deeply shaded.

deathmarriageselfhoodliterature

Work Information

A dark, introspective story in which death, marriage, and literary ambition press on the narrator’s sense of self. Its atmosphere is uneasy and deeply shaded.

A dark, introspective story in which death, marriage, and literary ambition press on the narrator’s sense of self. Its atmosphere is uneasy and deeply shaded.

Book Information

Publisher
Vanguard Pr
Published
1972-08-01
Language
英語
Size
22.86 x 17.78 x 2.54 cm
ISBN-13
9780814907184
ISBN-10
0814907180
Price
2799 JPY

The complex relationship between love and betrayal is explored in these twenty-four short stories

Reviews

  • Massive collection of great short stories

    When JCO is good, she's really good. This is a gigantic collection of short stories loosely connected by the eponymous leitmotifs. The stories are unanimously captivating and highlight an author at her A-game; few short story collections manage to maintain tension this consistently; moreover, the collection manages to retain a sense of psychological insight into a vast prism of people over its length. It also never becomes repetitive. If you like dark, intelligent fiction, look no further. This is excellence.

  • A strong early collection from JCO

    I thought Marriages and Infidelities was a great collection of short stories. It was almost as good as her collection, The Wheel of Love I read a couple of weeks ago. Every story is well written and enjoyable and make Marriages and Infidelities a strong collection. Like The Wheel of Love, there are no clunkers and every story earns its place. The stories in Marriages and Infidelities have similar themes to the stories in The Wheel of Love and I’d say they are companions to each other. I’d only read one of the stories before, The Lady with the Pet Dog. Among my favourites were The Sacred Marriage, 29 Inventions, By the River, Scenes of Passion and Despair, Did You Ever Slip on Red Blood? and The Turn of the Screw. The other stores were very good. Marriages and Infidelities is an example of how good JCO can be when she come out guns blazing.

Related Literary Awards