Review: 'The Frenzy: Stories' by Joyce Carol Oates

I enjoy reading about people hitting their breaking point, really going through it and then, hopefully, finding some kind of resolution and freedom in the end, even if that end is grim. The Frenzy tested that enjoyment a little bit as Joyce Carol Oates explores the depths of the human mind and shows it in confronting detail. Thanks to Hogarth and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 16/06/2026
Publisher: Random House; Hogarth

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

Joyce Carol Oates is a master of the short story and one of the legends of the form. Her collections of short fiction have twice been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and have won numerous awards, including the O. Henry Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Art of the Short Story. In The Frenzy: Stories, Oates plunges us into the lives of her characters at moments of crisis and confusion, when much of what they understand about themselves and those they love comes undone.

A young woman on a supposedly romantic weekend trip to Cape May, New Jersey, turns the tables on her older, married lover. A freak bicycle accident on a bridge haunts one family for decades. A girl jealous of her popular cousin discovers she is the lucky one. A widow waits at her riverside house for her dead husband's return. A young man hiking in the woods comes upon a couple in a heated, possibly violent argument—should he intervene?

Suspenseful and psychologically astute, Oates's short stories enthrall and captivate as they dissect her character's deepest fears—revealing our own in turn. "Literature is a texture of words," says Oates of her short fiction, "evoking life in the most vivid ways—psychologically, physically." These new stories blazingly evoke life at its most vivid and perilous, when fate and free will intersect, and one ominous encounter or bad choice can be the difference between an ordinary day and the point of no return.

In The Frenzy, Joyce Carol Oates brings together various stories that all show people experiencing some kind of temporary break, whether that is an actual break with reality or a break from normality, from the way they pretend to live their lives. The collection is split into three parts, each part containing three stories. In Part I, we find 'The Frenzy' about a middle-aged man and his affair with the daughter of a friend, 'The Fear', about two cousins who are so alike except life intervenes, and 'The Bicycle Accident', about how an accident on a fateful day changes the lives of a daughter and her mother. Part II contains 'The Call', about an adult daughter being called home (?) to her mother, 'The Return', about a woman visiting an old friend and the visit devolving into discussions about the friend's deceased husband, and 'The Redwoods', where a man sees a couple arguing in a potentially abusive way while out on a hike. Part III has 'Small Veins', about a woman visiting her oncologist, 'Refuge', in which a seemingly disappeared husband returns but maybe he should've stayed away, and finally 'Night Fishing at Antibes', about two elderly women connecting after their husbands' deaths. I have been trying to figure out whether the split into parts has to do with themes or characters, and in a way one can be found. Part I is about big events that drastically alter the main character's/protagonist's expectations of life. In Part II, the characters find themselves returning to previous events, reconsidering their own actions, how life could have gone if other choices had been made, and, in a sense, refusing to move on. Part III there is a question about the future, about how we move forward after moments of frenzy and big happenings, whether a sense of normality can ever be found. 

I read The Frenzy quite a while ago and although at the time I didn't know how I felt about it, the ensuing weeks have had me reconsider some of my initial thoughts. At the time, parts of The Frenzy felt unrealistic or almost too simple, and yet it is some of those exact parts that have stayed with me most vividly since. I keep returning to certain scenarios and images, small details Oates included, and they are now seemingly embedded in my brain. I don't know if that makes me like the stories any more than I did before, but it does make me appreciate Oates' craft more. The seeming simpleness of her writing belies a deep insight into human behaviour and dynamics and there is this slowly developing realisation, across the collection, that we can never fully escape ourselves, our pasts, or our moments of madness. I had similarly conflicting feelings about The Doll Master and Other Stories I think, so perhaps this weird feeling of confusion, dissatisfaction, and obsession that somehow still scratches an itch is actually a hallmark of Oates' writing. There are no easy answers here and I think that if you read the stories too quickly, they might leave you unaffected. But if you sit with them a little bit, let them resonate, then they will stay with you. Beneath their odd mix of simplicity and drama, the stories in The Frenzy speak to some quite dark feelings that could probably do with some sunlight.

I give this collection....

4 Universes!

I wavered on my rating, mainly because I am still so in two minds about the collection. But the fact that I'm still thinking about The Frenzy, almost three months after first reading it, does speak to its insidious quality.