Cardiff, by the Sea

Four Novellas of Suspense

De: Joyce Carol Oates

Narrado por: Lauren Ezzo

Four brand-new novellas by the number one New York Times best-selling, National Book Award-winning "grand mistress of ghoulishness" (Publishers Weekly).

An academic in Pennsylvania discovers a terrifying trauma from her past after inheriting a house in Cardiff, Maine, from someone she has never heard of. A pubescent girl, overcome with loneliness, befriends a feral cat that becomes her protector from the increasingly aggressive males that surround her. A brilliant but shy college sophomore is distraught to discover that she's pregnant, and the professor who takes her under his wing may not have innocent intentions. And a woman who marries into a family shattered by tragedy finds herself haunted by her predecessor's voice, an inexplicably befouled well, and a compulsive attraction to a garage that took two lives.

In these psychologically daring, chillingly suspenseful pieces, the author of We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde writes about women facing threats past and present, once again cementing her reputation for "great intelligence and dead-on imaginative powers" (Los Angeles Times Book Review).

©2020 The Ontario Review (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

An okay collection…

The stories in this collection were okay, somewhat engaging and definitely listenable. A good choice if you don’t have time for a full length novel, and can only listen in short bursts. I don’t think Joyce Carol Oates is one of my favorite authors, but I do like this genre, so I would try more of her writing. Not bad, but just doesn’t totally grab me! I can’t decide about the narration: it was somewhat robotic and monotone, but appropriately serious for this type of (horror) content.

All very moving and haunting

Excellent and very emotional tales. I highly recommend this set of works that reveal their inner turmoil.

Just ok

These 4 novellas were fine. I definitely struggled to finish this, though. I found each story somewhat repetitive, and all 4 of the main characters were very similar.

I also did not enjoy the narrator. The voices she used for male characters were all the same and sounded silly. Her narration was ok, but was overdone.

Her style and use of language

The build up and the surprise at the end of each story. Highly recommend this book. Not too long and very entertaining.

It was okay.

The first novella needed some serious volume control, when I listened to it I would have to constant turn the volume up and down bc the hush tones but also raised voices would be too loud in my ears. I understand they’re short stories but I felt like so many unfinished parts could’ve had a few more things to tie it together. Kind of felt pointless to read

Excellent storytelling

The first story is especially good. I enjoy the way she crafts a story. Strong female characters.

All stories in collection

JCO is my all time favorite writer. Her prose is poetry. And this reader is exquisite , able to capture what I consider the essence of the "Oates-ien" experience.

Awful story and worse reading!

I couldn’t stand listening to the reader. It was the normal course of her reading not just the dreadful voices she made for almost all the characters- terrible terrible terrible and I’m a HUGE JCO fan!

Ugh.

Listened to the first novella and couldn’t continue on to the next. The narrator’s voice, when speaking as Claire, has an air of pretentiousness which made it very hard to feel anything other than disdain for the main character. I kept listening, hoping the other characters would be better, but the shrill, nails-on-a-chalkboard voice, yes voice, not voices, of the elderly sisters was more than I could take. I somehow managed to finish the novella only to sit and ponder what on earth I had just listened to. I’ve realized that just because an author is popular doesn’t mean everything they write is worth reading or listening to.