Elegantly poetic—and often archly funny—meditations on death by a superb writer.
The angel of death, Washoe the chimp, and T.S. Eliot share the stage in Williams’ enchanting collection of 99 short-short stories.
“The older dog’s death”: This is one complete entry in Williams’ lyrical set of 99 stories about death, its number nicely echoing Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante turns up, to be sure. Williams’ tales, though, more often concern Azrael, the archangel who escorts souls to meet God, and the devil, with whom Azrael has some pointed exchanges: “Death and I are not the same,” Azrael insists, to which the devil replies, “A difference without distinction.” On occasion they agree—for instance, that crows and ravens “are marvelous,” belonging to the same genus just as, by the devil’s calculus, do spirit and soul. More often, the devil thwarts Azrael, an innocently guileless psychopomp who asks in all seriousness, remembering the song “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” whether the devil’s “stupendous and tireless herd were entirely red...and what did yippie i oh yippie i ay mean anyway?” Even when the two aren’t present in Williams’ glimmering stories, they’re close by as her characters maneuver toward death, one woman expressing the wish to be buried with her horse, and Vladimir Nabokov approaching the end with tears in his eyes in the knowledge that he’ll no longer be able to chase butterflies. The sensitive reader will likely come away from Williams’ little book having shed a few tears, too, sharing with the writer the sad realization that the world is coming to an end in careless human hands, their victims such blameless creatures as snakes, whose “existence underground kept the earth from falling apart,” and manatees. Happily, in Williams’ telling, the souls of animals go to greet God, too, thanks to Azrael’s devoted service.
Elegantly poetic—and often archly funny—meditations on death by a superb writer.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781959030591
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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