Cardiff, by the Sea (Oates novellas)

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Cardiff by the Sea: Four Novellas of Suspense
First edition
Author	Joyce Carol Oates
Language	English
Genre	Gothic, Suspense
Publisher	The Mysterious Press
Publication date	2020
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardback)
Pages	402
ISBN	978-0-8021-5799-7

Cardiff, by the Sea: Four Novellas of Suspense is a collection of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published in 2020 by The Mysterious Press.

The novella "Phantomwise: 1972" was included in The Best American Mystery Stories in 2018. "The Surviving Child" received The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror award in 2020.^[1]

Periodical and date of original publication provided where available:^[2]

"Cardiff, by the Sea" (Ellery Queen, March 1, 2020)
"Miao Dao" (Amazon Original Stories, December 27, 2018)
"Phantomwise: 1972" (Ellery Queen, 2017)
"The Surviving Child" (Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, August 20, 2019)

Reception

Publishers Weekly writes: "The four novellas in this spellbinding collection from Oates carefully tread the boundary between psychological and supernatural expressions of the macabre...This superb outing is sure to captivate."^[3]

Literary critic Elena Hartwell at the New York Review of Books writes: "Using her remarkable, literary voice to investigate the psychological experiences of victims, Oates requires that we willingly suspend our disbelief and reject realism as a means to identify societal truths."^[4]

Reviewer Rob Latham at LARB provides a critical compendium of Oates's oeuvre. Latham writes:

While some of Oates's thrillers verge on classic noir in their hard-boiled tone, the novellas in Cardiff, by the Sea have a more languid, melancholy air, strongly reminiscent of the work of Daphne du Maurier.^[5]

Despite the reassuring settings and tone, readers should be prepared for "eruptions of violence as dark and ugly as in any splatter movie."^[6]

Footnotes

↑ "Cardiff, by the Sea: Four Novella of Suspense". Celestial Timepiece: A Joyce Carol Patchwork. Celestial Timepiece. April 15, 2020. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
↑ Oates, 2020, Opposite credits, Acknowledgments
↑ "Review: Cardiff, by the Sea". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
↑ Hartwell, 2020.
↑ Latham, 2021: "Despite the reassuring settings and tone, readers should be prepared..."
↑ Latham, 2021.

Sources

Hartwell, Elena. 2020. "Review: Cardiff, by the Sea: Four Novellas of Suspense." New York Review of Books. October 8, 2020. https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/cardiff-sea-four-novellas Accessed 13 March 2025.
Latham, Rob. 2021. "The Ineluctable Agon of Desire: Joyce Carol Oates's Suspense Fiction." Los Angeles Review of Books, January 8, 2021. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-ineluctable-agon-of-desire-joyce-carol-oatess-suspense-fiction/ Accessed 9 March 2025.
Oates, Joyce Carol. 2020. Cardiff, by the Sea: Four Novellas of Suspense. The Mysterious Press, New York. ISBN 978-0-8021-5799-7

v t e Works by Joyce Carol Oates
Short fiction
The Wonderland Quartet	A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967) Expensive People (1968) Them (1969) Wonderland (1971)
The Gothic Saga	Bellefleur (1980) A Bloodsmoor Romance (1982) Mysteries of Winterthurn (1984) My Heart Laid Bare (1998) The Accursed (2013)
Other novels	With Shuddering Fall (1964) Do With Me What You Will (1973) The Assassins: A Book of Hours (1975) Childwold (1976) Son of the Morning (1978) Cybele (1979) Unholy Loves (1979) Angel of Light (1981) Solstice (1984) Marya: A Life (1986) You Must Remember This (1987) American Appetites (1989) Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990) Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (1993) What I Lived For (1994) Zombie (1995) We Were the Mulvaneys (1996) Man Crazy (1997) Broke Heart Blues (1999) Blonde (2000) Middle Age: A Romance (2001) I'll Take You There (2002) The Tattooed Girl (2003) The Falls (2004) Missing Mom (2005) Black Girl / White Girl (2006) The Gravedigger's Daughter (2007) My Sister, My Love (2008) Little Bird of Heaven (2009) Mudwoman (2012) The Sacrifice (2015) Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. (2020) Breathe (2021) Babysitter (2022) 48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister (2023) Butcher: A Novel (2024) Fox (2025)
Novellas	Black Water (1992) First Love: A Gothic Tale (1996) Beasts (2001) The Corn Maiden: A Love Story (2005) A Fair Maiden (2010) Cardiff, by the Sea (2020)
Short story collections	By the North Gate (1963) Upon the Sweeping Flood and Other Stories (1966) The Wheel of Love and Other Stories (1970) Marriages and Infidelities (1972) The Goddess and Other Women (1974) The Hungry Ghosts: Seven Allusive Comedies (1974) The Poisoned Kiss and Other Stories from the Portuguese (1975) The Seduction and Other Stories (1975) Crossing the Border (1976) Night-Side: Eighteen Tales (1977) All the Good People I've Left Behind (1979) A Sentimental Education (1980) Last Days: Stories (1984) Raven's Wing (1986) The Assignation (1988) Heat and Other Stories (1991) Where Is Here? (1992) Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?: Selected Early Stories (1993) Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque (1994) Demon and Other Tales (1996) I Am No One You Know: Stories (2004) High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories, 1966–2006 (2006) The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense (2007) Wild Nights! (2008) Dear Husband (2009) The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares (2011) Black Dahlia & White Rose (2012) Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror (2016) DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense (2017) Beautiful Days: Stories (2018) Night-Gaunts (2018) The (Other) You (2021) Night, Neon (2021) Extenuating Circumstances: Stories of Crime and Suspense (2022) Zero-Sum: Stories (2023) Flint Kill Creek: Stories of Mystery and Suspense (2024)
Short stories	"Sweet Love Remembered" (1960) "A Legacy" (1961) "The Fine White Mist of Winter" (1962) "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (1963) "Pastoral Blood" (1963) "Stigmata" (1963) "Upon the Sweeping Flood" (1963) "First Views of the Enemy" (1964) "The Survival of Childhood" (1964) "Archways" (1965) "Norman and the Killer" (1965) "In the Region of Ice" (1966) "In the Warehouse" (1967) "The Voyage to Rosewood" (1967) "Accomplished Desires" (1968) "How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again" (1969) "Unmailed, Unwritten Letters" (1969) "Bodies" (1970) "I Was in Love" (1970) "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" (1970) "The Dead" (1971) "The Metamorphosis" (1971) "Blindfold" (1972) "The Lady With the Pet Dog" (1972) "Nightmusic" (1972) "Small Avalanches" (1972) "The Girl" (1974) "The Goddess" (1974) "Magna Mater" (1974) "The Sacrifice" (1975) "Daisy" (1977) "Night-Side" (1977) "A Theory of Knowledge" (1977) "The Translation" (1977) "Funland" (1983)
Young adult fiction	Big Mouth & Ugly Girl (2002) Small Avalanches and Other Stories (2003) Freaky Green Eyes (2003) Sexy (2005) After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away (2006)

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