The Accursed

A bravura performance by a brilliant author with total control of her writing skills and an exhaustive mastery of literary traditions, which she deploys with the panache of Horowitz playing Chopin.

Oates has written a neo-Gothic novel filled with demonic manifestations and overwhelming passions that take place against the background of American society (and Princeton University) with all its salient characteristics and problems in the first decade of the 20th century. 

The novel is also, and not incidentally, filled with wonderful, three-dimensional portraits of major American cultural and political figures of the time—Woodrow Wilson, Upton Sinclair, Mark Twain, Teddy Roosevelt,… show more.

When this book appeared in 2013, it was advertised as Joyce Carol Oates’s “vampire novel,” but that’s misleading. There is a vampire of sorts in it, and certainly, a curse that affects many in the story, but it’s far more than just a horror tale—this is an exhilarating historical Gothic fantasia set in the early 20th century and featuring, among others, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, and Mark Twain.

I found it so gripping and unputdownable that I skipped work to finish reading it and promptly picked up Sinclair’s novel King Coal afterward simply because I was so fascinated with his… show more.

This story subverted many of my usual expectations, like the dark view of a few historical characters and the idea of a demon lover.

I like when a story is grounded in reality and then challenges me to see things differently in a persuasive way. Her skillful mash ups of the fantastic, gothic, historical, horror, and social commentary kept surprising me.

True, this is a harsh story, but I feel reading something like that clears the palate. My favorite bit: the demon’s bog kingdom, twisted in the Oates way.