Black Dahlia & White Rose - by Joyce Carol Oates (Paperback)

About the Book

In this work the author offers a collection of 11 previously uncollected stories, including a title piece that tracks the friendship between Elizabeth Short, famously known as the Black Dahlia, the victim of a markedly brutal murder in 1940s Los Angeles that remains unsolved, and her roommate, Norma Jeane Baker who became Marilyn Monroe. In each of these stories the author explores the menace that lurks at the edge of and intrudes upon even the seemingly safest of lives and maps the transformational cost of such instrusions.

Book Synopsis

"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.

From the Back Cover

Unafraid to venture into no-man's-lands both real and surreal, Oates takes readers deep into dangerous territory in eleven stories that showcase the keen rewards of her relentless brio and invention. Whether charting the inner lives of two beautiful and mysteriously doomed women in 1940s Los Angeles--Elizabeth Short, otherwise known as the Black Dahlia, and her roommate, Norma Jeane Baker, soon to become Marilyn Monroe--the psychological compulsion of a well-to-do businessman's wife who is ravished by, and elopes with, a lover who is not what he seems, or the uneasily duplicitous relationships between young women and their parents, Black Dahlia & White Rose explores the menace that lurks at the edges of and intrudes upon even the seemingly safest of lives--and maps with rare emotional acuity the transformational cost of such intrusions.

Review Quotes

"This latest collection... showcases [Oates's] talent for imbuing mundane events with menace and the kind of irony that springs from narrow brushes with disaster... Oates' hypnotic prose ensures that readers will be unable to look away." -- Kirkus Reviews

"[A] masterfully honed collection of dark tales... With precision and force, the ever-mesmerizing Oates rips open the scrim of ordinariness to expose the chaos that undermines every human notion of control, reason, and sanctuary." -- Booklist