'Pursuit' another creepy, suspenseful thriller from prolific master Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is one of the few American writers who move smoothly between genres, achieving critical and commercial success in very different arenas – in Oates’ case, literary fiction and suspense thrillers. When one publishes as frequently as Oates does (at latest count, she's written more than 50 novels), the opportunity to work in varying modes increases.
"Pursuit" (Mysterious Press, 224 pp., ★★★ out of four stars) is her latest offering in a series of recent thrillers, including "DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense." The short, spare "Pursuit" succeeds on the level of its ambition: creepy, violent and occasionally affecting.
When 20-year-old Abby Zengler, married for exactly 21 hours, steps into traffic on her way to work and is hit by a city bus, shocked onlookers and her new husband, Willem, are confounded by the mystery of why she would do such a thing. In the hospital, seriously injured and barely conscious, Abby’s mind goes deep into a place she never wanted to revisit: the traumatic abandonment she suffered as a child in Chautauqua Falls, New York, as well as a recurring nightmare about skeletons hidden in the grass. Willem, a devoutly religious college student, can’t understand why his “skittish virginal wife” might harm herself – or why she regularly wakes up screaming.
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Then there is the matter of her name. Just before the wedding, Abby confessed that her real name isn’t Abby at all – it’s Miriam. When she stumbles anxiously over the explanation, he isn’t alarmed … at first. But in the hospital, especially when he finds an odd rash or red mark encircling Abby’s wrist, Willem has to confront how little he actually knows about the woman he has just married.
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Although this frame story drags somewhat, "Pursuit" intensifies in its second half, where Oates moves back in time to give us the point of view of two new characters: Abby's parents, Nicola and Lew Hayman. We learn through short chapters and stream-of-consciousness that Lew returned from the Iraq War a damaged and violent man. He barely knew his baby daughter before he and his wife divorced – an event that came as a relief to Nicola, a professor who sees the grave mistake of her marriage (at 17) to the older, unstable Lew.
When she begins to receive threatening messages from the man she thought had disappeared from their life for good, Nicola realizes that Lew’s mental state has gone from bad to worse. (Oates convincingly dramatizes the all-too-frequent inability of veterans, especially in rural areas, to access mental health care.) A terrifying home invasion ensues, as does a fight for survival.
"Pursuit" has a plot that is duly horrifying, but except for Nicola, the characters in the novel – like its title, perhaps – are unmemorable, indifferent. The stilted courtship of Abby and Willem provokes a shock when the reader realizes, through the mentions of iPhones and MRI machines, that the novel isn’t taking place in the 1950s. Suspenseful and disturbing, "Pursuit" will appeal to Oates’ mystery fans, less so to the admirers of her literary work.
