I Am No One You Know

A Literary Fiction Short Story Collection by Joyce Carol Oates

Subgenres:

Short Stories,
Contemporary Fiction

Published 2004

Length 316 pages

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Short stories where ordinary lives twist into the extraordinary
Portraits of women facing danger, secrets, and moral crossroads
Snapshots of American life with a dark, emotional undercurrent

Publisher Description

I Am No One You Know contains nineteen startling stories that bear witness to the remarkably varied lives of Americans of our time.

In "Fire," a troubled young wife discovers a rare, radiant happiness in an adulterous relationship. In "Curly Red," a girl makes a decision to reveal a family secret, and changes her life irrevocably. In "The Girl with the Blackened Eye," selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2001, a girl pushed to an even greater extreme of courage and desperation manages to survive her abduction by a serial killer. And in "Three Girls," two adventuresome NYU undergraduates seal their secret love by following, and protecting, Marilyn Monroe in disguise at Strand Used Books on a snowy evening in 1956.

These vividly rendered portraits of women, men, and children testify to Oates's compassion for the mysterious and luminous resources of the human spirit.

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