The world of Joyce Carol Oates, as ever, is filled with ordinary, chronically unhappy and uncomfortably familiar people. In LOVELY, DARK, DEEP, a disparate array of short stories from a famously versatile writer, we are treated to subjects as diverse as a smartphone-addicted grandson taking his grandmother to chemotherapy, an academic preparing to inherit the estate of her famous aging father, and a new couple altered by their encounter with a vicious mastiff on a hike. Central to each story is an intimate human relationship in deep, revelatory instability. Upon finishing the collection, one is left with a sense of the profound uncertainty of human relationships.

“Mastiff,” perhaps the most immediate of the stories, focuses on a not-so-young couple who are holding each other at arm’s length, at best, until they are attacked by the titular dog. The man leaps to the woman’s defense, becoming brutally mauled in the process. As a result, the woman impulsively refers to herself in the hospital as his fiancé. The uncomfortable nature of this story places trauma in a relationship, and questions whether trauma brings us closer together or farther apart. As ever, Oates lands in delightfully ambiguous territory.

"...an excellent collection of short fiction in its own right. Its evocation of the uncanny and the disturbing within seemingly mundane personal relationships is reminiscent of the great short stories of Flannery O’Connor."

The title story, “Lovely, Dark, Deep,” which was published by Harper’s in November 2013, portrays an increasingly uncomfortable and unsettling visit by a graduate student at the Bread Loaf School of English, who appears to know much more about Robert Frost’s life than she at first seems to --- perhaps more than she should. The uncomfortable interview, in which the surly old poet harangues the young woman, brilliantly shifts in power, and the student begins to interrogate Frost in an exceedingly personal and hostile manner, excoriating him for buried evils in his family life.

A particular joy in this collection is the obsessive, hysterical and unexpected “Betrayal,” a relatively short installment for this collection, about a boy from a privileged family who upon graduation (with honors, as mentioned multiple times) horrifies his family by taking an unpaid internship at the San Diego Zoo and becoming a vegetarian. The story unfolds from the manic perspective of the parents, who quite literally believe their son has turned into an animal. The narrative brilliance of the tale is such that I don’t wish to further spoil it for anyone who might wish to read it. On first read, it feels nearly out of place in this mostly somber collection; it is the only story that seems to dabble more than slightly in humor, indeed growing almost farcical at times. However, there is a deep melancholy underpinning the narrative instability of the story that makes it a fascinating read, and perhaps the finest piece in this collection.

Oates, a master at work for five decades, is an American literary institution. Surely no collection of short stories, no matter how wonderful or terrible, could break her legacy now. The fact is that this is an excellent collection of short fiction in its own right. Its evocation of the uncanny and the disturbing within seemingly mundane personal relationships is reminiscent of the great short stories of Flannery O’Connor. The insecurities and instabilities that define the relationships in LOVELY, DARK, DEEP are as disturbing as they are fascinating.