I listened to the unabridged audio version of The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates, which was excellently narrated by Grover Gardner.
Some books are meant to be devoured in a weekend, and others are meant to be lived inside for weeks on end. The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates is decidedly the latter. It took me roughly five weeks to listen and absorb The Accursed. I definitely underestimated how long it would take to reasonablely read and digest this novel. It's a chunkster at
Earlier this month, I finished reading this sprawling, atmospheric masterpiece as a buddy read and community read-along with Marianne over at Let’s Read (click on the link to read Marianne's review of The Accursed). I am still in awe of what Oates accomplished here. I learned that it took roughly thirty years for Oates to write, The Accursed, as it is a dense, ambitious modern Gothic novel that blends supernatural horror with razor-sharp historical fiction. I also think it is safe to say that The Accursed adds fantasy to the mix as well. In other words, there is a lot going on in this novel.
Welcome to 1905 Princeton
Set primarily between 1905 and 1906 in Princeton, New Jersey, the story centers on a mysterious, diabolical curse that descends upon the town’s most affluent and respected families. What begins with a bride-to-be vanishing on her wedding day spirals into fourteen months of escalating dread involving vampires, demons, haunting apparitions, and unspeakable family secrets.
While The Accursed is technically the fifth installment in Oates’s loose Gothic Saga, don’t let that intimidate you—the books are only thematically linked, and this reads entirely as a standalone novel.
A Four-Part Journey
Oates structures the novel into four distinct parts, and each section carries its own unique rhythm, focus, and atmospheric shift. While I thoroughly enjoyed the entire novel, Part 1 and Part 4 stood out as my absolute favorites. Part 1 sets the haunting, eerie stage with incredible momentum as the curse first strikes, while Part 4 brings the sprawling narrative home with immense power and payoff. The middle sections demand a bit more patience as the web of characters expands and historical tangents unfold, but the journey across all four parts is deeply rewarding.
Where Real History Meets the Supernatural
One of the most fascinating aspects of this novel is how Oates weaves real historical figures alongside her sprawling cast of fictional characters. At this point in history, Woodrow Wilson is not yet President of the United States, but the president of Princeton University. Alongside him, readers cross paths with literary titans like Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and Mark Twain.
What makes their appearances so compelling is how closely Oates anchors them to their real-life personalities and historical records. Jack London bursts onto the page with the exact charismatic, swaggering energy noted in his biographies, while Upton Sinclair brings his earnest, reform-minded intensity. Most bitingly, Oates uses Wilson’s documented elitism, institutional power struggles, and racial prejudices to mirror the rot at the heart of the town's curse. Beneath the supernatural terror of vampires and curses, Oates is really dissecting class privilege, hypocrisy, religion, and race in early twentieth-century America.
The Narrator: Reliable Chronicler or Deluded Historian?
Adding another layer of genius to the story is Oates's choice of narrator: M.W. van Dorn, an elderly Princeton local writing decades after the events took place. Analyzing whether van Dorn is a reliable chronicler makes for a fascinating study:
- Why he appears reliable: Van Dorn presents himself as a meticulous amateur historian. He constantly references primary sources—diaries, private letters, sermons, news clippings, and archived documents—to reconstruct the history of 1905–1906. He painstakingly tracks details to give his account an air of academic authority.
- Why he is deeply unreliable: Underneath that scholarly prose lies an intensely biased narrator. Van Dorn is an insider of the conservative Princeton elite he writes about, and his personal prejudices color how he frames the characters, race, and social standing. He routinely glosses over or rationalizes the moral failings of his own class while treating supernatural occurrences as self-evident facts. Furthermore, because he is reconstructing events long after the fact through secondhand testimonies, his filter is inherently subjective and self-serving.
Decoding van Dorn’s hidden biases while he insists he is simply recording "facts" is one of the greatest pleasures of reading this novel.
A Shocking, Unambiguous Finale
Because The Accursed is so thick and layered, it demands patience as you navigate van Dorn's commentary. However, the ultimate payoff in Part 4 is extraordinary.
Without giving away a single spoiler, I will say that the final section, "The Covenant," completely floored me. I never saw the ending coming. Even better, in a genre that often leans heavily on vague, open-ended mysteries, Oates delivers a conclusion that is bold, decisive, and completely unambiguous. Everything clicks into place in a way that left me stunned.
The Audiobook Experience
If you are intimidated by the sheer size of this tome, I cannot recommend the audiobook edition enough. It is narrated by the incomparable Grover Gardner, whose steady, authoritative, and subtly theatrical voice is an absolute match for Oates’s nineteenth-century-style prose—and fits the voice of M.W. van Dorn perfectly. I have loved his narration on other books, and his performance here elevates the dense historical atmosphere and keeps the sprawling cast distinct and engaging.
Final Thoughts
The Accursed is a tour de force of Gothic storytelling. It requires a bit of commitment to navigate its four distinct parts and historical tangents, which is why it lands at a very strong 4 stars out of 5 stars for me, but the sheer craft on display is unforgettable. If you love atmospheric horror, richly researched historical settings, and an ending that truly packs a punch, pick this one up—and definitely consider the audio!
Additionally, here are four links to the read-along posts I created in October. Each post contains discussion questions and characters trackers should you decided to read The Accursed after reading this review.
Have you read any of Joyce Carol Oates’s Gothic novels, or did you join Marianne and me for our read-along? What are your thoughts on M.W. van Dorn's reliability as a narrator? Let’s chat in the comments!
Until my next post, happy reading!!
