Raven's Wing

by Joyce Carol Oates

A collection of sixteen stories explores the mysteries and varieties of American experience and includes "Golden Gloves," the story of a would-be champion boxer whose career and marriage fall tragically short of his expectations

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

305 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 1986

About the author

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel Them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.

Reviews

[Emily Kestrel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Oates is at her best with short fiction; in full-length novels, she is--sometimes--a bit heavy-handed and rambling. (All those exclamation marks! And those carefully constructed asides. Interesting--excellent, even--in small doses, but tedious after a while.) In part, my preference for her short fiction is also due to her subject matter, which almost uniformly centers on the darker aspects of the modern American experience: violence, rape, exploitation, alienation, substance abuse, etc.

Despite these qualifications, I have always appreciated Oates' position in the modern literary canon, and I think the short stories of Raven's Wing are typical of her better work. Some are explorations of the subtler aspects of disappointment: the title story "Raven's Wing," "The Seasons" (one of my favorites), "Harrow Street at Linden," "Ancient Airs, Voices" (another especially memorable story) and "The Jesuit"--the latter about dealing with a coworker (in this case, one with religious authority no less) who seems to hate you for no reason at all. The need for approval in the face of someone's unexplained dislike for you is probably one of those universal experiences, and Oates handles it with flair.

Other stories are much darker and more disturbing: "Baby," "Testimony" and another of my favorites, "Little Wife," a tale of a runaway abused by a group of men, apparently with her consent (as she has every opportunity to leave or call the police, and does not). This one is firmly in typical Oatesian territory (reminiscent of her novel Man Crazy, which I found repulsive) , but tempered by the effect of being described by her eleven-year-old narrator.

On the whole, I really appreciated these stories. I still find Oates an over-prolific and often problematic writer (due to the combination of over-heated prose and squicky subject matter), but when she is at her best, she is really quite good. Definitely recommended for fans of literary fiction.

[Marian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even given the book was published in 1986, I felt like these characters were not real, though meant to be, living in a two-dimensional world. I didn't believe in them. The whole experience for me was flat.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

*Raven's wing --
*The seasons --
*Nairobi --
*Golden gloves --
Harrow Street at Linden --
Happy --
*Ancient airs, voices --
Double solitaire --
*Manslaughter --
Little wife --
The Jesuit --
The mother --
Testimony --
Nuclear holocaust --
Surf city --
Little blood-button --
Baby --
April --

[Bernadette McNeil · Rating 1 out of 5]

not a fan. I also don't really like reading a book of short stories. Weird stories so only read about half the book

[Violet Dupuis · Rating 2 out of 5]

it’s so blah

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of Joyce Carol Oates earlier stories, these show the prediliction to delve into the darker side of humanity with tales of cheating spouses, abandoned children and violence. Not a light read but if you enjoy her work (as I do) these are great.

[Libscigrl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not her best, but it is some of her earlier work. You can see her beginning to delve into some dark stuff...some of these stories were intense! She likes to leave you hanging/guessing/questioning too...

[Nadia]

very goog