The Frenzy

Frenzy (noun): a temporary madness; a violent mental or emotional agitation; intense usually wild and often disorderly compulsive or agitated activity

Joyce Carol Oates, a master of the short story and a two-time Pulitzer finalist, has earned countless accolades, including the O. Henry and PEN/Malamud Awards, for her penetrating explorations of human life. In The Frenzy: Stories, Oates plunges readers into the lives of her characters at moments of crisis, when the world they know—and the people they trust—suddenly unravel.

A weekend trip to Cape May turns dangerous for a young woman and her older, married lover. A freak bicycle accident on a bridge casts a shadow over a family for decades. Jealousy, longing, and unexpected fortune collide in the lives of a girl and her cousin. A widow waits in vain for her husband’s return, and a hiker confronts a tense, possibly violent encounter in the woods.

Suspenseful, psychologically astute, and unflinchingly human, these stories reveal the fragility of our perceptions, the unpredictability of fate, and the high stakes of seemingly ordinary choices. As Oates writes, “Literature is a texture of words,” and in The Frenzy, she wields them to evoke life at its most vivid, intense, and perilous.