Give Me Your Heart [Paperback]

“Haunting . . . Written in the author’s classic, clear style, these narratives enchant.”—Boston Globe

The need for love—obsessive, self-destructive, unpredictable—takes us to forbidden places, as in the chilling world ofGive Me Your Heart, a new collection of stories by the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates. In ten razor-sharp stories, children veer beyond their parents’ control, wives and husbands wake up to find that they hardly know each other, haunted pasts intrude upon uncertain futures, and those who bring us the most harm may be the nearest at hand.

“Dread, in fiction, can be a magnificent thing . . . Oates isn’t writing horror fiction, but she might as well be. Her stories pack the same kind of visceral wallop.”—Los Angeles Times

Give Me Your Heart
Dear Dr. K——,
 It’s been a long time, hasn’t it! Twenty-three years, nine months, and eleven days.
 Since we last saw each other. Since you last saw, “nude” on your naked knees, me.
 Dr. K——! The formal salutation isn’t meant as flattery, still less as mockery—please understand. I am not writing after so many years to beg an unreasonable favor of you (I hope), or to make demands, merely to inquire if, in your judgment, I should go through the formality, and the trouble, of applying to be the lucky recipient of your most precious organ, your heart. If I may expect to collect what is due to me, after so many years.
 I’ve learned that you, the renowned Dr. K——, are one who has generously signed a “living will” donating his organs to those in need. Not for Dr. K—— an old-fashioned, selfish funeral and bl“m