So far, I'm not seeing the "nightmare" the jacket verbiage promises. It seems like a very typical Oates story thus far, actually.
If you've ever read any JCO, you know that she focuses deeply on just a few main characters, upon which the entire plot turns. This is known as character-driven literature, or literary fiction. Beasts is no different. So far, the tale follows Gillian, a privileged college girl in New England as she copes with her illicit love for her poetry professor, Andre Harrow. She also finds herself deeply fascinated by his wife, Dorcas, a sculptress who creates disturbing statues of women representing their various roles in society.
One afternoon, although we know it was not the first such afternoon, Gillian finds herself compelled to follow Dorcas from the college into the small town adjacent. She is thrown into close contact with the older woman when both enter the post office.
But something is amiss at Catamount College, as a minor arsonist sets the occasional small fire around campus. Gillian and her friends are curious about the fires, whether the person responsible is a student at the college, or someone from town, and what they're supposed to mean.
There is also a rumor, or a memory of a rumor, that Andre Harrow and Dorcas would occasionally pick a favorite girl - someone they invited to their home for dinner, took with them on their travels to Europe etc. These girls are instructed never to talk about their personal contact with Andre and Dorcas, and no one knows whether such things actually occur.
This sort of suggestion of what is to come is very typical of Oates. She did something similar with We Were The Mulvaneys, and Foxfire - potentially her two most famous novels. I can't speak yet to the entire content of this novella, obviously, but I can say that the character and quality of the writing reminds one of why Joyce Carol Oates is such a revered name in the literary community. She handles her material with the aplomb one comes to expect from JCO, the East to modern American literature's sun.
Tomorrow, we'll get to the meat of the story!
