The Accursed Audiobook

Quotes

• “A brilliant Gothic mystery that has the punch of historical fiction. Currents of race, class, and academic intrigue swirl under the surface, but it’s the demonic curse that propels the action...Oates casts a powerful spell. You’ll close The Accursed and want to start it all over again.”

  — People (4 stars)

• “Joyce Carol Oates is at her gothic best…an astonishing fever dream of a novel.”

  — Los Angeles Times

• “Joyce Carol Oates has written what may be the world’s finest postmodern Gothic novel: E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime set in Dracula’s castle. It’s dense, challenging, problematic, horrifying, funny, prolix, and full of crazy people. You should read it...Oates’ hypnotic prose has never been better displayed.”

  — New York Times Book Review

• “This latest effort looks like a belated candidate for the Great Oates Novel…The Accursed is a big, mad, colorful romp, respectful of the literary traditions in which it participates, leavened with a piquant humor.”

  — Financial Times

• “For those who enjoy total immersion in this kind of historical fiction, The Accursed is good fun, as mesmerizing as a demon and as addictive as a patent cure.”

  — Boston Globe

• “A fascinating novel in which historical truth and imagination collide to create an unsettling vision of America as it entered the twentieth century.”

  — Columbus Dispatch

• “The Accursed blends history, horror, fantasy, and black comedy into a trippy literary brew. For fans of Oates’ gothic works, this is a heady draught indeed.”

  — Dallas Morning News

• “Regular readers of Oates will be familiar with the game…After [new readers make] their way through The Accursed, no one will find it easy to forget.”

  — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

• “The Accursed is a unique, vast, multilayered narrative, a genre-bending beast of a book, utterly startling from start to finish, compulsive and engaging, the writing crackling with energy and wit. This is an elaborately conceived work.”

  — New York Review of Books

• “Oates’ atmospheric prose beautifully captures the flavor of gothic fiction…In Oates’ hands, this supernatural tale becomes a meditation on the perils of parochial thinking. It demands we think—with monsters—about our failure to face the darkest truths about ourselves and the choices we’ve made.”

  — NPR

• “[The Accursed] is, in addition to being a thrilling tale in the best gothic tradition, a lesson in master craftsmanship…The story sprawls, reaches, demands, tears, and shrieks in homage to the traditional gothic, yet with fresh, surprising twists and turns…Oates has given us a brilliantly crafted work .”

  — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

• “Historical fiction with a spooky Oatesian twist.”

  — Library Journal

• “Oates finishes up a big novel begun years before—and it’s a keeper…Carefully and densely plotted, chockablock with twists and turns and fleeting characters, her novel offers a satisfying modern rejoinder to the best of M. R. James—and perhaps even Henry James…It’s oddly entertaining, as a good supernatural yarn should be.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

• “Grover Gardner narrates the story in crisp, practiced tones. He flawlessly weaves narrative with essential details that flesh out the facts or elucidate minutiae. Is there one story or many in this mixture of history and fiction? Gardner takes all the jarring asides in stride, using droll tones to portray the upper crust and their infatuations. Listeners are challenged to follow the complex plot, or rather plots, which take many hours to merge and reveal themselves.”

  — AudioFile