A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates

Katya Spivak is a young nanny working for the summer amongst the privileged splendour of Bay Harbor. Approached by the elderly Marcus Kidder, she allows herself to be chastely seduced into sitting for him as he paints her portrait, but Kidder's designs gradually become more sinister, even as Katya demonstrates a ruthless streak behind her apparent innocence.

Kidder's character is well-sketched, both predatory and pathetic, and the queasy rhythm of Katya's alternately charmed and disgusted relationship with him is skilfully done. The rough neglect of her working class upbringing brings an edge to its exploitative nature, and the unexpected shift towards the end from psychological suspense to twisted fairy tale is effective. On the whole though the prose is perfunctory, and in places almost lazy; ellipses abound to clumsily indicate repressed revelation; a gate and a garden table are described as being made of “wrought-iron” four times in half as many pages. Overall, it's hard to dismiss the suspicion that a taut, menacing short story has been force-fed to justify inclusion between hard covers. Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most celebrated and prodigious of post-war American novelists, but this slender novel does not add to her reputation. [Richard Strachan]