Description

Nominated for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award

Lauded as the best story writer of our time, Joy Williams returns with a taut collection that responds to our modern dilemmas with her signature dry wit and deftness of touch. In sinister and shifting landscapes, we meet souls lost and found: from the twin heiresses of a dirty industrial fortune, who must commit a violent act in recompense for their family’s deeds, to a newly grown man who still revolves in a dreamscape of his childhood boarding-school innocence, to the “pelican child”, who lives with the bony, ill-tempered Baba Yaga in a little hut on chicken legs.

For readers of Lorrie Moore, Mary Gaitskill and George Saunders, these haunted stories examine the instincts separating us from the beastly and the divine.

Publisher Review

Praise for Joy Williams * – * I’ve been a fan of Joy Williams since I first read her — Ali Smith Williams is the kind of funny you can’t explain … a master of the craft — Anne Enright * Guardian * Williams is a writer for our times: both visionary and caustic, knowing yet also full of wonder — Catherine Taylor * Financial Times * Williams is one of the most pioneering fiction writers of our time — Andrew Motion * New Statesman * Joy Williams’ off-kilter, surreal visions of our world are unforgettable — Sophie Mackintosh