HONORED GUEST

Stories impeccably careful never to raise their voices, though not much is raised in the reader by them, either: a third collection from the novelist and storywriter (Escapes, 1989, etc.).

Cool-toned, expertly kept at a near-toneless pitch, Williams’s pieces have much about them of Raymond Carver, though not his brevity: too often the tales read long. Their characters seem driven in equal parts by meanness, confusion, and craziness, and few of them will charm—though Donna is certainly nicer than the bitchy friend she dutifully, and inexplicably, visits in the mental hospital (“The Visiting Privilege”), and the 11th-grade daughter in “Honored Guest” is far nicer than her monstrous mother, who admittedly is dying, but still. A mother whose son killed himself—he thought he had spikes in his head—gains a bit of sympathy when she repudiates the boy’s druggy and self-involved friends (“Marabou”), but no character has much affect in another death story (“Substance”), where a suicide leaves mundane belongings to various friends, including leaving his dog to one (the others ditch the stuff; the dog person feels she can’t). Tired tropes are revisited as affluent Americans are shown to know less than the Caribbean locals (“Claro”) or as spoiled American kids play at the ex-pat life in Guatemala, supported by their parents (“Fortune”). The ghost of Flannery O’Connor inspirits a tale or two: “Charity,” about an unhappily married and socially conscious woman who is drawn into progressively deeper trouble with a trashy family; and “The Other Week,” an intricate construction about an ex-alcoholic teetering toward an affair with her mentally questionable gardener. After her husband dies, a diabetic woman takes pistol lessons for a while and befriends her instructor (“Anodyne”); another widow, after an evening with her truly mean daughter (“Hammer”), falls off the wagon and dies five years later, at 50, amid a sprinkling of symbols.

Twelve ambitious and expert stories, yet seldom involving.