I Am No One You Know

<p><em>I Am No One You Know</em> 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.</p> <p>These vividly rendered portraits of women men and children testify to Oates's compassion for the mysterious and luminous resources of the human spirit.</p>