'Wanting'

The fourth story in this anthology is a novella by Joyce Carol Oates. Such a contribution inevitably comes freighted - or fraught - with the highest expectations. Fortunately, the story lives up to any hype that might exist in the reader's head.

The first part of the story consists of three lines.

Badly she wants a man.
Or, she wants a man badly.
Or, she wants a man. Badly.

A woman we know only as L.K. returns to Detroit to visit a friend who is terminally ill. L.K. is reluctant to see her friend, keener to see the city she once lived in. As the tale unfolds we learn more about the woman, who is no longer young. Her recollections include ferocious racial violence that racked the city in the Sixties. During a night-time walk she encounters an artist, Vann, who invites her to visit his studio apartment in a building she once knew. This is very unwise, and much of the story consists of L.K.'s inner struggles between need and reason.

The story is delivered in sharp focus, with close-ups of Detroit past and present, and of the characters. Strange works of art are contemplated. They seem to include real hair, complete with bloody roots. L.K. realises that she is being unwise, but she sticks with Vann, in part because she is afraid of being accused of racism if she rejects him. It is not clear if Vann is in fact white, one of the many ambiguities that propel the woman to her fate.

In many ways this a conventional horror story, but so well told, without any of the conventional tricks and shocks, that it seems new. And perhaps it is. I found myself wondering if Vann had any existence outside the woman's troubled mind, long undermined by grief and solitude.

More from this running review soon.