Customer Reviews

Taking Care

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Once in awhile I get drawn back to Joy Williams work. State of Grace is one of my all time favorite novels. Joy Williams is one of the very few authors I read again and again, and I always come away inspired and entranced and somehow surprised. How can a story surprise you again and again? Because her descriptions are so unusual and so apt, her use of language so original, and the endings so absolutely inevitable and unexpected. She is given to seeing the most mundane, helpless, and unsavory things. Her characters are caught in their own beings like tigers prowling the limits of their cages, and what she says about them (and thus about the modern world) is all true and all wrapped in the endless hope that is the human condition.

In this collection of short stories, Joy Williams again demonstrates the brilliant precision of her writing, which is at once mordant and heartbreaking. An example is her description of a man and the baby he has been forced to care for due to his daughter's carelessness: "He comes back to the table and gives her a little more milk, a half jar of strained chicken and a few spoonfuls of dessert...The baby enjoys all equally. She is good. She eats rapidly and neatly. Sometimes she grasps the spoon, turns it around and thrusts the wrong end into her mouth. Of course there is nothing that cannot be done incorrectly." I heartily recommend anything written by Joy Williams. She should be better known than she is. She is an American original.

In this collection of short stories, Joy Williams again demonstrates the brilliant precision of her writing, which is at once mordant and heartbreaking. An example is her description of a man and the baby he has been forced to care for due to his daughter's carelessness: "He comes back to the table and gives her a little more milk, a half jar of strained chicken and a few spoonfuls of dessert...The baby enjoys all equally. She is good. She eats rapidly and neatly. Sometimes she grasps the spoon, turns it around and thrusts the wrong end into her mouth. Of course there is nothing that cannot be done incorrectly." I heartily recommend anything written by Joy Williams. She should be better known than she is. She is an American original.

This is a review of the book itself, not of the contents. I recently ordered this book and was frustrated to discover that it was a print on demand edition, rather than the original Vintage Contemporary edition I thought I was ordering. It is printed on cheap paper and unpleasant to look at. I looked back at the Amazon web page thinking I had overlooked this crucial detail, but they don't seem to disclose the fact anywhere. These are wonderful stories, but if you care about the quality of your books, you will likely feel cheated and disappointed by this edition, as I did.

I can't get past the second story. I think it's a matter of personel taste, but as I'm reading...my interest fades. The short sentence, the ambiguous language...I guess I need something meatier and more colorful. The language seems simple and too subtle. Some people love this style...and sometimes I do. For me, Joy just doesn't pull it off. If you like Raymond Carver, you'll love this. Guess what? I don't.

These stories are proof that she is one of the most original and gifted writers ever to have written in English.