Heather's Comments: A nightmarish tale of young love and obsession; Joyce Carol Oates’ novella, Beasts, haunts the reader long after it has been finished and stored away on the bookshelf. Constantly and subtly alluding to a poem entitled “Medlars and Sorb-Apples” from D.H. Lawrence’s Birds, Beasts, and Flowers, which begins: “I love you, rotten/Delicious rottenness”, the tone for this story is set from the first page.
As the story begins, a middle aged woman is at the Louvre in Paris when she notices a totem, a grotesque female figure which seems so familiar to her and instantly she is transported to a time years in the past; from that moment on the reader has the sense that something is just not right.
Flash back in time and it is 1975 and Gillian Brauer is in her junior year at Catamount College in Massachusetts. She has developed a strange obsession with her eccentric English professor, Mr. Harrow and his sensuous, sculptress wife Dorcas. When they invite her to be their ‘assistant’, Gillian can hardly believe it. She begins to spend late nights at the Harrow’s home, eating and drinking, talking and laughing; but then everything starts to go wrong. Gillian begins to realize that the Harrow’s are not who they seem to be and when they take a vacation and leave her in charge of the house, Gillian finds that she has been betrayed and deceived all along; without knowing it, she has opened herself up to a nightmare.
Eloquently written and psychologically disturbing, Beasts is a literary horror novella sure to surprise and haunt readers. The characters, although well developed, are almost unbelievable, especially Mr. Harrow and Dorcas, because of the horrific and psychopathic things they do. The setting seems perpetually dark and gloomy, which only serves to further set the nightmarish tone.
Although it was more than a little disturbing, I really liked this book and the fact that it was only a little over a hundred pages made it a very quick read. I think anyone who enjoys slight horror and psychological suspense will not be disappointed with this book. However, there are some slightly graphic parts so all of those faint of heart beware. Check Status at GPL
