A review by yegua_blanca
Zero Sum: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates

3.0

Short stories veering towards the uncomfortable, gruesome, horrifying. JCO explores the obsessive thoughts of her characters, their fascination with themselves. I particularly loved how she writes about motherhood and the body in stories like The Baby-Monitor.

"But it is some sort of irony, to be inhabiting a female body: (ravaged) uterus, (splayed) pelvis, (stubbly-haired) groin, heavy-hanging udders grazing her upper belly."

Favorite stories: Zero-Sum, The Suicide, The Baby-Monitor, A Theory Pre-Post-Mortem