By Rob Kitchin
Joyce Carol Oates short story, Faithless, was originally published in the winter 1997 issue of Kenyon Review and was selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 1998. It later served as the title story for her short story collection, Faithless: Tales of Transgression , published in 2001, and is about to be re-published as one of The Best American Noir of the Century edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler, a collection of 39 stories (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). Different sub-genres tend to wax and wane in popularity over time but this collection seems very temporally lop-sided (there are 10 selections from the 1990s and 10 from the 2000s, but only one selected from the 1930s, two from the 1920s, 1960s, 1970s, three from the 1940s and 1980s, and six from the 1950s). The 1950s were undoubtedly a strong decade for noir, as were the last twenty years, but it’s difficult to believe that there was only one story from the 1930s and three from the 1940s worthy of inclusion. Regardless, that an Oates story was included in The Best American Noir of the Century comes as little surprise. She had her first novel published in 1964 (With Shuddering Fall) when she was aged 26. Since then she has written 57 other novels (8 of them as Rosamond Smith and 3 as Lauren Kelly), 8 novellas, 20 collections of short stories, 8 plays, 14 books of essays and criticism, and 10 collections of poetry. She has won the National Book Award (nominated 5 other times) and been nominated for a Pullitzer three times, as well as winning a number of other prizes.
Faithless tells the story of two sisters, Cornelia and Constance, who were abandoned by their mother as young children, and their lives dealing with growing up on a farm in the Chautauqua Valley in the 1920s, not knowing why their mother left them and having to live with the stigma and rumours amongst the local community. The story is told through the voice of Cornelia’s daughter Bethany, who from a young age pressed against their reticence and reluctance seeking to get them to reveal the tale of her grandmother’s disappearance; her faithless act of abandonment. For a short story, the piece has a great depth, carefully and evocatively laying bare the complex family and social relations, and forensically detailing the act of abandonment and the legacy of consequences that reverberate throughout the sister’s lives. As the story unfolded I did start to wonder whether it was really going anywhere, other than being an interesting character study, but Oates finishes it off perfectly with a wicked, dark twist.
Rob Kitchin is the author of The Rule Book and The White Gallows.
