Joy Williams

At a hot-dog-eating contest or at a demolition derby, in line at the pharmacy counter waiting for a shingles vaccination, living in a cave with a colony of bats: the Almighty appears in ever-more mysterious ways in Ninety-Nine Stories of God, Joy Williams' surreal, sublime new collection of very short short stories. Each less than a page long, each packing a punch belied by its size, every one of these ninety-nine stories tells of everyday human interaction with an increasingly elusive and arbitrary deity. Haunted by an array of extraordinary historical figures, from Kafka and Tolstoy to O. J. Simpson and Philip K. Dick, but populated by anonymous ordinary people just like you and me, the stories pool seemingly random moments into something deep, dazzling and disconcerting. Bleak and funny, ironic and lyrical, enigmatic and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God breaks down the barriers between the everyday and the divine and takes Williams' writing into territories strange and new.

Ninety-Nine Stories of God

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."

Melody Izard

That silly God has some trouble moving around in the world without people acting so different. They just won't be themselves when he's around. And if they don't watch their peas and ques then there just might be a story about them in a little book called ninety-nine stories of god. God cries and sometimes is just a little bit disappointed. Maybe a lot disappointed.

Blair Enright

César Steven Toribio

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.

Ninety-Nine Stories of God

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