Joy Williams is the author of four novels–the most recent, The Quick and the Dead, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001–and three other collections of stories, as well as Ill Nature, a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Among her many honors are the Rea Award for the short story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Key West, Florida, and Tucson, Arizona.
"Beautiful.... Unsettling.... [Contains] among the best American
short stories of the past two decades." —The Atlantic Monthly
"The short stories in Joy Williams's Honored Guest are so vibrant
and alive they have heartbeats, the prose so electric and dazzling
it makes the pulse race." —Vanity Fair
"By all means read, and re-read, these subtle and touching and
deceptively funny and sometimes darkly magical stories." —St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
"A brilliant spawn of Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor, Joy
Williams blends mordant wit, uncanny characters, and weirdly
familiar landscapes and locales.... By turns these narratives
soothe, then surprise, then shock with jolts of recognition,
recoil, and naked redemption." —Elle"Joy Williams wastes not a word
in the stories that she tells.... Phenomenally interesting....
Miraculously and intelligently weird." —Chicago Tribune
"In wonderful, stark relief, Williams gives us a glimpse into this
pliability of the human heart, its marvelous ability to withstand
adversity and accommodate whatever comes next." —Los Angeles Times
Book Review"If Joy Williams's publisher made cigarettes rather than
story collections it would be required to slap a consumer warning
on her latest collection, Honored Guest.... [It's]
narcotic–alluring precisely because it is toxic, dangerous. And
Williams is so good she merely has to wave her characters'
melancholia under our noses and we crave more." —The Philadelphia
Inquirer"Darkly enticing and intuitive.... In Williams's hands, the
inevitability of death is both poignant and, at times, comfortably
humorous." —Rocky Mountain News"The unexpected is the only thing
that can be counted on—other than the author's brilliant prose,
acerbic humor and implicit biting commentary on the state of our
world today." —Santa Fe New Mexican"Captur[es] the casual brutality
of everyday life with a combination of grim humor, macabre incident
and an ironic eye.... There's a thrilling appeal, a perverse
pleasure, in reading Williams' cold take on things....
Fascinating." —The Oregonian
"Each [story] spins with the searing comedy and blunt drama of the
gallows.... Williams is a deeply compassionate writer, and in these
luminous, feeling moments, the specter of another writer from
another century and another country rises: Anton Chekhov, the
book's honored ghost." —Time Out New York"Joy Williams's collection
is an engrossing and perceptive work." —Richmond
Times-Dispatch"[Williams] balances horror and humor with uncanny
skill and laces her stories with compassion.... Her stories stick
in the mind like burrs." —The Columbus Dispatch"[A] darkly
humorous, potent collection." —Anniston Star"There is much artistry
to be found in the short story.... Especially when it is in the
hands of an artist like Joy Williams." —Tulsa World"Of the many
qualities of her prose–clarity, economy, intelligence, complete
mastery of the sentence–the most conspicuous is authority.... Joy
Williams's stories are illuminating, burning, intelligent and
large." —Books and Culture
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