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    Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories
    Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories
    Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories
    Audiobook8 hours

    Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories

    Written by Joyce Carol Oates

    Narrated by Paul Michael Garcia, Coleen Marlo and Tavia Gilbert

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    “A mesmerizing storyteller who seems almost unnaturally able to enter the tormented inner lives of her characters.”
    —Denver Post

    Black Dahlia & White Rose is a brilliant collection of short fiction from National Book Award winner and New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates, one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.  These stores, at once lyrical and unsettling, shine with the author’s trademark fascination with finding the unpredictable amidst the prosaic—from her imaginative recreation of  friendship between two tragically doomed young women (Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Short), to the tale of an infidelity as deeply human as it is otherworldly. Black Dahlia & White Rose is a major offering from one of the most important artists in contemporary American literature; a superb collection that showcases Joyce Carol Oates’s ferocious energy and darkly imaginative storytelling power.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateSep 11, 2012
    ISBN9780062246158
    Author

    Joyce Carol Oates

    Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist, critic, playwright, poet and author of short stories and one of America’s most respected literary figures. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University and a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.

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    Reviews for Black Dahlia & White Rose

    4/5

    15 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This is a collection of short stories. The author is prolific and has written better books than this one. She might be considered a modern day Edgar Allan Poe. Some of the stories are more interesting than others. Some are odd in than apparently the character changes from human to animal without any explanation (one story from woman to bird and in another from woman to spotted hyena). The story called Anniversary has an apparent conflicting ending. Joyce is well researched as evidenced by the stories of Black Dahlia and White Rose and that of Spotted Hyenas: A Romance. Joyce likes to deal with stories of sexual frustration and broken relationships. I liked the story entitled Good Samaritan for the interesting ending.
    • 4/5
      I have been reading Joyce Carol Oates for decades and I still do not know how she does it. Now in her mid-seventies, Oates is producing some of the best, and darkest, fiction of her career – and she does it at a pace that would shame most writers half her age. The quality and impact of her latest short story collection, Black Dahlia & White Rose, makes me believe that Ms. Oates will continue to write memorable fiction for a long time to come. Thankfully.Black Dahlia & White Rose is a collection of eleven short stories recently published in magazines such as Playboy, Harper’s, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The book, comprised of four separate theme-related sections, opens with its tone-setting title story. The story is based on the infamous 1947 Los Angeles murder-mutilation of Elizabeth Short (who was dubbed the “Black Dahlia”) that, to this day, remains unsolved. It is especially striking because Oates allows the victim to speak retrospectively from beyond the grave and portrays her as having been the lone roommate of aspiring starlet Marilyn Monroe at the time of her murder. Believe it or not, the stories get even darker from there. Oates uses the remaining ten to expose the hidden inner lives of ordinary human beings simply trying to make their way from one day to the next without getting into any more trouble than they are in already. Her characters, be they academics or befuddled middle-school students, San Quentin lifers or innocent young children, wives trapped in doomed marriages or abandoned husbands wondering what happened, all have something in common: they are miserable and they are looking for a way out. But, because the choices they make often place these troubled souls into more precarious circumstances than the ones they yearn to escape, their moves usually just make things worse A poor college student learns the hard way that returning a found wallet does not always work out well for “The Good Samaritan.” A respected college professor finds out how unprepared she is to do voluntary teaching inside the walls of a maximum-security prison. A young middle-school student faces a life-changing trauma no child should ever be asked to confront alone. A woman contacts a man to whom she was attracted when she was one of his graduate students – almost twenty years earlier. These are just some of the sinister stories readers will experience in this collection.Black Dahlia & White Rose is a collection via which the author reminds us again that we are all more vulnerable to evil and sudden loss than we dare admit to ourselves. With approximately twenty short story collections already under her belt, Joyce Carol Oates has already accomplished more than most writers would dare dream of accomplishing in an entire career. And that is just her short fiction. Rated at: 4.0
    • 5/5
      What a joy this reading was. There are snappy, surprising short stories that show the classic human sides. Each story shows other abysses that are self-contained and can not be compared. Each story grabbed me from the first set and was exciting until the end.This book I highly recommend.
    • 4/5
      Chilling. Loved it!
    • 2/5
      I seem to have a love/hate relationship with the writings of this author. There are instances when after reading one of her books, I swear never to read another, and then find one I haven't read and bring it home.Exceedingly dark, this is a set of short stories, each different, but alike it the typical noir of her writing style. The title is taken from the first story of Elizabeth Short, aka The murdered woman known as The Black Dahlia. The unsolved mystery remains to haunt. I'm not sure if Elizabeth was a room mate of Marilyn Monroe, but in this story the two beauties share an apartment while trying to make a mark in Hollywood. One is grossly butchered, the other goes on to ever-lasting fame.Some of the remaining stories are ok, but not as strong as the first. Overall, unless you are an avid fan of Joyce Carol Oates, I can't recommend this one. But there certainly is something about her style that keeps me coming back for more.
    • 4/5
      I picked up this collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates because of the title story, which is about the Hollywood murder of Betty Short, known as the Black Dahlia. Here, Short and Marilyn Monroe are roomates and aspiring starlets. Monroe is still innocent and holding to her principles, working hard at acting class and playing by the rules, such as they are. Short has been in town longer, is a lot less starry-eyed and more willing to take chances. Which didn't work out well for her. The rest of the stories are astonishingly diverse. Usually, a collection of stories by a single author can feel repetitive, as stories repeat themes and word choices. JCO doesn't do this at all. The following story, I.D., is told from the point of view of a teenage girl pulled out out of her Atlantic City middle school by the police. Other stories deal with an English class in a prison, an Italian vacation, a meeting with a high school guidance counselor and a graduate school drop-out reconnecting with a TA who had helped her. Some are told in first person, others in third, but always from a close proximity to the protagonist, who changes dramatically in each story. The women are all insecure and several have Daddy issues, but all in very different ways.There is a sense of unease running through each story or, at least, I spent much of each story waiting for something horrible to happen. Especially when things seemed to be going fine, or when the protagonist felt hope for the future. I don't think these stories are intended to make the reader feel comforted or secure.
    • 5/5
      Those who know me are well aware that I am quite a fan of Joyce Carol Oates works. I was surprised to see the low average ratings for Black Dahlia & White Rose. In all fairness, I have not read the other reviews so I cannot remark on them, yet I do wonder if all the readers were familiar with Joyce Carol Oates' writing style. If, as a reader, one is looking for uplifting, fully concluded short stories, then this most likely is not the collection of stories to pick up. However, if one is looking for a book of short stories to be read slowly, savored, and fully understood, then I do recommend Black Dahlia & White Rose with one word of warning to those new to this brilliant author; the stories can appear morbid at times.

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