Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Robert Phillips

Critical Essay by Robert Phillips

Ms. Oates's [Night Side] is … more than a grab-bag. All 18 tales are concerned with borderline reality, what the author has called "that mysterious realm of the paranormal." [It] differs considerably from her early novels in that almost all the violence is mental rather than actual…. [These] are interior tales—stories of individuals haunted by their own uneasinesses and anxieties. What is striking is how Ms. Oates manages to reconstruct the dreams and nightmares which afflict us all…. (p. 601)

Robert Phillips, in Commonweal (copyright © 1978 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.; reprinted by permission of Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.), September 15, 1978.