The Accursed
by Joyce Carol Oates
Ecco, 667 pp., $27.99; $15.99 (paper)
Carthage
by Joyce Carol Oates
Ecco, 482 pp., $26.99
At 667 pages instead of 666, The Accursed is obviously one page too long.
Joyce Carol Oates’s extravaganza of demons, vampires, doppelgangers, seduction, possession, murder, and terrible family secrets has been called, by one who should know (Stephen King), “the world’s finest postmodern Gothic novel.” In its pages the devil—or more precisely one of his “satans”—appears in Princeton, New Jersey, in the year 1905 and over the course of fourteen months wreaks havoc on the town’s wealthy and privileged citizens, especially the family of the minister Winslow Slade.
When The Accursed was first published last spring, it was widely praised by reviewers (including Francine Prose in these pages). Yet…