Ninety-Nine Stories of God

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Review “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“[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“[Q]uietly splendid. . . . I believe in art, and Ninety-Nine Stories of God feels like prayer to me.” - Boston Globe“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“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 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“[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“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 Read more About the Author Joy Williams is the author of four novels, four previous story collections, and the book of essays Ill Nature. She’s been nominated for the National Book Award, The Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recent title is The Visiting Privilege: New & Collected Stories. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Laramie, Wyoming. Read more