Ninety-Nine Stories of God

Starred review from February 8, 2016
In Williams’s hands (The Visiting Privilege), a “story of God” can apparently be almost anything. Her slender new collection includes in its 99 stories pithy flash-fiction pieces about mothers, wives, writers, and dogs, anecdotes from the lives of Tolstoy and Kafka, newspaper clipping–like meditations on O.J. Simpson and Ted Kaczynski, conversational asides (the story “Museum” consists entirely of the line “We were not interested the way we thought we would be interested”), and, finally, actual stories about God—a particularly put-upon, bewildered God who seems to have lost the thread of his creation somewhere along the line. Here, the Holy Ghost is just as likely to alight in a slaughterhouse as to visit a demolition derby or appear to William James or Simone Weil, both of whom have their own brush with transcendence. The best of Williams’s humor, and her wonderful feel for characters, is present in pieces such as “Elephants Never Forget God,” in which James Agee describes a movie he’d like to make, or “Giraffe,” in which an aging gardener suddenly feels the presence of the divine. Somewhere in the neighborhood of Jim Harrison’s Letters to Yesenin, these stories are 100% Williams: funny, unsettling, and mysterious, to be puzzled over and enjoyed across multiple readings.

Starred review from May 1, 2016
"Hell is unpleasant. Heaven is more pleasant." Williams, maker of superb short fictions, plumbs the distinction in this slender, evocative collection. Absent a direct statement otherwise, we should understand the deity here to be something along the lines of what old John Lennon said: "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." The God that lurks in Williams' brief, elegant stories is very often puzzled by creation, as when he tries to understand why humans should so have it in for wolves: "You really are so intelligent," he tells one pack, "and have such glorious eyes. Why do you think you're hounded so?" Ever gracious, the wolves thank God for including them in his plan, leaving him to ponder--well, never mind, since we don't want to step on the punch line. Suffice it to say that sometimes God shows up on time, sometimes not, sometimes not at all; sometimes he extends grace, and sometimes, as with a colony of bats he's been living with in a cave, he "had done nothing to save them." This isn't theology in the Joel Osteen vein, but it is deep and thought-through theology all the same, and even when God doesn't figure in the narrative by name, the divine presence is immanent. And sometimes, of course, God is there without announcing himself, taking the form of, say, that homeless fellow who mutteringly assures us, "You don't get older during the time spent in church." Seldom occupying more than a couple of pages, Williams' stories are headed by a number, one to 99, but carry an "undertitle" at the end that glosses the tale in question, sometimes quite offhandedly: in the case of that heaven and hell distinction, for example, it's "PRETTY MUCH THE SAME, THEN," while an argument about the impossibility of really knowing God is slugged, rather more mysteriously, "NAKED MIND." Admirers of Williams--and anyone who treasures a story well told should be one--will find much to like here.

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September 1, 2016

As Pulitzer finalist Williams observes, "Franz Kafka once called his writing a form of prayer," and these stories are indeed prayer-like in their sculpted simplicity--and proverb-like in their investigation of the world's mysterious ways. A humanist goes mad countering the idea of intelligent life elsewhere, a brilliant painter continues her work after a debilitating accident, a child and a lion discuss near-death experience, and a man denies his long sober mother a martini on her deathbed as "she'd regret it." From a reading of Dante's Inferno on Good Friday to Philip K. Dick's asking about a girl's golden fish necklace, belief figures as both backdrop and content here. But the Lord's intervention in our lives can be uneven. VERDICT Perfect little gems; it's rare when such short works (many the length of this review) can truly satisfy.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2016
Fans of Williams will not be disappointed in this latest offering. The stories, rather than devotional, or a sweet reminiscence of divine intervention, are a series of vignettes that throw into sharp relief the rippling something in the back of humanity's daily lives. When God appears by name, he is a character, bemused and sometimes befuddled by the creatures he has created, curious and sometimes surprised by the features humanity has bestowed on him. The Lord appears intermittently, trying out new material. It's as if Williams took the song What If God Was One of Us? and gave it flesh, pondering God's visit with wolves or adoption of a turtle. Though God does not appear by name in every story, something of the divine echoes in each, something larger than the humans that populate each chapter. Each story is brief, with some less than a paragraph. Some amaze, some are quietly powerful, some gracefully absurd. Much like the divine, Williams' prose is simple and brutal, thoughtful and haunting. A spare but startling book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)