Description

‘The writer who saved my life – or my soul.’ Merve Emre, The New Yorker

‘A true living hero of the American avant-garde.’ Jonathan Franzen

‘One of the very few contemporary prose writers who seem to be doing something independent, energetic, heartfelt.’ Lydia Davis

A new collection of stories from the ‘godmother of flash fiction’ (The Paris Review).

In Williams’ stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life.

In perfectly honed sentences, with a sly and occasionally wild wit, Williams shows us how any moment of any day can open onto disappointment, pleasure, and possibility.

Publisher Review

Praise for How High? - That High: 'Williams is a magician of the miniature ... Don't let their diminutive stature fool you: these pieces pack a punch. Brief, elliptical, steeped in longing - or is that lust? - they offer slices of life that rely on interior more than exterior details, which is to say they are small road maps of the soul ... All the pieces here ... are rigorous in both language and emotion, using nuance and inference to explore the implications, the contradictions, that people rarely share aloud ... Williams' small gems are as dense and beautiful as diamonds, compressed from the carbon of daily life.' * Kirkus Reviews * Praise for How High? - That High: 'Williams returns with a collection showcasing her mastery of succinct and suggestive stories ... Williams' prose evokes both strangeness and familiarity as she gets at the core of what it means to live into one's later years. This is by no means for everyone, but it will surely satisfy fans of well-wrought fiction.' * Publishers Weekly * Praise for The Collected Stories of Diane Williams: 'Erudite, elegant, and stubbornly experimental. For any writer, an omnibus collection is a triumph. To see years of Ms Williams' confounding fictions collected in so hefty a volume is like seeing snowflakes accrue into an avalanche.' -- Rumaan Alam * The New York Times * Praise for The Collected Stories of Diane Williams: 'Full of funny, libidinal, and invigorating enigmas ... Readers who love the arresting phrase, the surprising word, will gravitate to her ... It's perfect to leave on the bedside table, to be consulted before one's dreamlife begins.' -- Ange Mlinko * The London Review of Books * Praise for Diane Williams: 'I would describe Williams as the writer who saved my life - or my soul, if one believes such a thing exists ... [Williams'] stories, many no longer than a page, suggest that what is left unsaid between people remains more powerful than what they have the capacity to articulate. Although Williams studied with Gordon Lish (and before that, with Philip Roth), her minimalism is distinctive for its sublimity and its spirituality, its ability to evoke the laws of a world apart.' -- Merve Emre * The New Yorker * Praise for Diane Williams: 'Williams can do more with two sentences than most writers can do with two hundred pages.' * The New York Review of Books * Praise for Diane Williams: 'Not a single moment of the prose, here, is what you expect, and even the ordinary is, in the context created by Diane Williams, no longer ordinary: it is fresh, happy, and peculiar - or is it we who are refreshed, happy, and more peculiar than before after reading her?' -- Lydia Davis Praise for Diane Williams: 'This book will rewire your brain.' * NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour *