Solstice

from the diary: “Monday 8/11/86

“Reading a novel by Joyce Carol Oates: Solstice. It’s good.”

Joyce Carol Oates writes a lot. Many of her stories have a fantastic or magical realist flavor, and they are often dark, even creepy. I think this is still the only of her novels I’ve read. I have read several short stories, mostly as I’ve run across them in anthologies. I probably read this one for the gay aspect. “Imperceptibly, hardly aware of what is happening to them at the deepest level of feeling, [the two women] move, or are moved, toward love, and ultimately beyond it, arriving at last at a near-fatal obsession with each other.” (That’s from Celestial Timepiece.) Doesn’t exactly sound life-affirming. Probably will never be an Oprah choice.