Ninety-Nine Stories of God
Joy Williams
(Author)
Description
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Joy Williams has a one-of-a-kind gift for capturing both the absurdity and the darkness of everyday life. In Ninety-Nine Stories of God, she takes on one of mankind's most confounding preoccupations: the Supreme Being.This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It's the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass--a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams's characters, however, are like the rest of us: anonymous strivers and bumblers who brush up against God in the least expected places or go searching for Him when He's standing right there. The Lord shows up at a hot-dog-eating contest, a demolition derby, a formal gala, and a drugstore, where he's in line to get a shingles vaccination. At turns comic and yearning, lyric and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God serves as a pure distillation of one of our great artists.
Product Details
Price
$19.95
$18.55
Publisher
Tin House Books
Publish Date
July 12, 2016
Pages
220
Dimensions
5.1 X 0.7 X 7.8 inches | 0.6 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9781941040355
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About the Author
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.
Reviews
[T]hese stories are 100% Williams: funny, unsettling, and mysterious, to be puzzled over and enjoyed across multiple readings.
Masterly . . . Ms. Williams is her usual funny, irreverent self.--The New York Times
Each story, like living tissue, is a reliquary that makes something splendid of our most secret agonies and desires.--Darcey Steinke, author of SISTER GOLDEN HAIR
The word count of this slender, extraordinary collection belies the density and combustibility of its contents, their midnight hilarity and edgeless reach. Joy Williams is our feral philosopher.--Karen Russell, author of VAMPIRES IN THE LEMON GROVE
These modern fables and skewed vignettes make the implausible plausible. Compression, as done by Joy Williams, extends the reach of her stories.--Amy Hempel, author of AT THE GATES OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
I would follow the trail of Joy Williams's words--always beautiful, compelling, and so wise--anywhere they led.
These stories are as full of surprises as a Noah's Ark filled with mystical beasts, three of each.--Edmund White, author of A BOY'S OWN STORY
Ninety-Nine Stories of God feels like prayer to me.
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
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
A collection of fiction for our fractured times from a modern master -- funny, profound and redemptive.--The Seattle Times, Best Books of 2016
[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.
Williams addicts will mainline [Ninety-Nine Stories of God]; newcomers should chase the high with last year's The Visiting Privilege.
Joy Williams is one of America's greatest living writers.
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
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
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
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
Magnificent, imaginative, and moving. --Read It Forward
Admirers of Williams--and anyone who treasures a story well told should be one--will find much to like here.
Masterly . . . Ms. Williams is her usual funny, irreverent self.--The New York Times
Each story, like living tissue, is a reliquary that makes something splendid of our most secret agonies and desires.--Darcey Steinke, author of SISTER GOLDEN HAIR
The word count of this slender, extraordinary collection belies the density and combustibility of its contents, their midnight hilarity and edgeless reach. Joy Williams is our feral philosopher.--Karen Russell, author of VAMPIRES IN THE LEMON GROVE
These modern fables and skewed vignettes make the implausible plausible. Compression, as done by Joy Williams, extends the reach of her stories.--Amy Hempel, author of AT THE GATES OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
I would follow the trail of Joy Williams's words--always beautiful, compelling, and so wise--anywhere they led.
These stories are as full of surprises as a Noah's Ark filled with mystical beasts, three of each.--Edmund White, author of A BOY'S OWN STORY
Ninety-Nine Stories of God feels like prayer to me.
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
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
A collection of fiction for our fractured times from a modern master -- funny, profound and redemptive.--The Seattle Times, Best Books of 2016
[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.
Williams addicts will mainline [Ninety-Nine Stories of God]; newcomers should chase the high with last year's The Visiting Privilege.
Joy Williams is one of America's greatest living writers.
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
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
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
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
Magnificent, imaginative, and moving. --Read It Forward
Admirers of Williams--and anyone who treasures a story well told should be one--will find much to like here.
