Joy Williams is the author of five novels, including The Quick and the Dead and most recently Harrow, five collections of stories, including Ninety-Nine Stories of God, as well as Ill Nature, a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Among her many honors are the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, the Paris Review's Hadada Award, and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to which she was elected in 2008. She lives in Arizona and Wyoming.
"Joy Williams is our contemporary O'Connor with a mix of Protestant
sacraments . . . and a Zen Koan consciousness."--The Los Angeles
Review of Books
Ninety-Nine Stories of God is gorgeously written,
sentence-to-sentence, and arrives in vignettes that are condensed
but not constrained, tight but not dry.--The Millions
[Williams] is ... a master of momentum; the stories in Ninety-Nine
Stories of God end and snap, end and snap, their wit yanking you up
and dressing you down right when you get a rhythm going.-- "The
Week"
A collection of fiction for our fractured times from a modern
master -- funny, profound and redemptive.--The Seattle Times, Best
Books of 2016
Admirers of Williams--and anyone who treasures a story well told
should be one--will find much to like here.-- "Kirkus, STARRED
REVIEW"
Baffling and illuminating, witty and disturbing, these 99
religious-flavored vignettes may not tell you why we are here or
where we are going, but they do possess the power to entrance. The
divine Joy Williams continues to work in mysterious ways.--The
Minnesota Star Tribune, Best Fiction of the Year
Each story in this collection shoots like a flare over the abyss of
our existential dilemma, flashing the briefest light on the depths
below and above.--Eugene Weekly
Every Joy Williams publication is a cause for celebration, and
Ninety-Nine Stories of God shows Williams in her usual biting,
insightful, and darkly humorous form.--Electric Literature, Best
Short Story Collections of 2016
Joy Williams is one of America's greatest living writers.--
"VICE"
Magnificent, imaginative, and moving. --Read It Forward
Sly and wonderful. . . . [Williams is] after some big truths in a
few words, stories so short that some of them could fit on Twitter,
except they're too smart and not mean enough.--The Seattle
Times
Weirdly soothing . . . The best approach is to read Ninety-Nine
Stories of God all in one shot, and then dip in randomly
thereafter, at your darkest and dimmest hour, finding solace.--The
Ringer
Williams addicts will mainline [Ninety-Nine Stories of God];
newcomers should chase the high with last year's The Visiting
Privilege.-- "New York Magazine"
[Q]uietly splendid. . . . I believe in art, and Ninety-Nine Stories
of God feels like prayer to me.-- "Boston Globe"
[The stories in Ninety-Nine Stories of God] miniaturize the
qualities found in Joy Williams's celebrated short stories:
concision, jumped connections, singular details, brutal humor. I
say "celebrated" because Williams has been writing stories for
forty years, and for forty years her literary peers--from Ann
Beattie to Raymond Carver, from James Salter to Don DeLillo--have
regarded her work with a kind of Masonic fellow-feeling. Yet she
remains, in some ways, a difficult, and certainly an original,
writer. She writes at a slight angle to the culture, literary and
otherwise. Her fiction is easy to follow and hard to fathom; easy
to enjoy and harder to absorb.--James Wood "The New Yorker"
Each story is beautifully strange and meditative in an unexpected
but glorious way. . . . Inarguably inspired, Ninety-Nine Stories of
God is a devotional for modern cynics and believers alike.--Lenny
Letter
Joy Williams's Ninety-Nine Stories of God reads like a blog-era
bible as conceived by Borges, Barthelme, and Mark Twain. No writer
alive captures the voices in the post-millennial psychic wilderness
like Joy Williams.--Jerry Stahl, author of PERMANENT MIDNIGHT
Much like the divine, Williams' prose is simple and brutal,
thoughtful and haunting. A spare but startling book.-- "Booklist,
STARRED REVIEW"
Not many writers can launch a premise like "The Lord was in line at
the pharmacy counter waiting to get His shingles shot" without
falling into gimmickry, but Williams--long known as a master story
writer--twists the scenario to an eerily moving effect. In
manipulating our most deeply rooted expectations, shooting them
through a prism of irony and wonder, she has created a cockeyed
book of common prayer.--San Francisco Chronicle
Read together, Joy Williams' stories are a humanist manifesto, a
celebration of our most mysterious values, desires and
prejudices.--Huffington Post, Best Fiction of 2016
The most beguiling book of the summer is this little collection of
99 very short stories about God. The catch is that the brilliantly
twisted Joy Williams is behind the stories, which means the Lord
finds himself at a hotdog-eating contest or in line for a shingles
vaccination. Mayhem, humor, and death mark this transcendent
book.-- "Publishers Weekly, Best Books of Summer"
While Marilynn Robinson (stately, assured) is so often held up as
the major Christian believer in American letters, I would argue
that, along with Annie Dillard, Joy Williams is the true seeker.
Her stories are probes sent out into the universe.-- "Oxford
American"
Williams says more in a page-long scene than most can say in a
chapter; it's fitting, then, that her very short collection manages
to encompass such an eternal theme with wit and grace.--
"Huffington Post"
Wry and playful, except for when densely allusive and willfully
obtuse, Ninety-Nine Stories of God is a treasure trove of
bafflements and tiny masterpieces.--The New York Times Book Review
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