The Dark Wonderland of JOYCE CAROL OATES
Joyce Carol Oates is having a moment. Her classic novel Blonde, the story of Marilyn Monroe, heads to Netflix Sept. 23 starring Ana de Armas. And last month, after releasing her crime and suspense anthology Extenuating Circumstances ($30, The Mysterious Press), Oates published Babysitter ($30, Knopf), a haunting story inspired by a real-life serial killer in 1970s Detroit. It has all the thrills of a crime novel: an ignored trophy wife, an orphan and errand boy for criminals who is desperate to be loved and a serial killer (dubbed Babysitter by the press) on the hunt for children he considers “not loved and not deserved.”
“A lot of the novel takes place in that breathless space between right now and what’s waiting, which could be so awful that you almost can’t think about it,” says Oates, 84. “Is this really happening to me? Am I really having this experience? I try to get those experiences in my novel.”
Go to Parade.com/oates for more of our interview and for a guide to the author’s collection of bestselling books. —Michael Giltz
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