Escapes

“Pammy will grow older, she is older already. But the world will remain as young as she was once, infinite in its possibilities, and uncaring.”

Joy Williams is a new writer to me. By that I mean that although I've heard of her, mostly in praise, before, this is the first book of hers I've read. It's always with a mixture of curiosity, dread (at being potentially disappointed), and openness (I'd like to think) that I encounter writers whose works are new to me. And it's with a mixture of awe, envy, and satiation that I finished the last words in this collection of short stories.

Every story collected here is compact, not as much as a word out of place. No ostentation, no showing off for the sake of it, just brilliantly crafted short show more stories that are as near to perfection as I think a short story could get. Of course not all stories are equal, as to be expected in any collection, but the heights to which the title story (Escapes), The Skater, Bromeliads (especially this), Health (and this too), and The Last Generation soared were utterly breathtaking. Right up there with the very best I've ever read. What these stories all have in common is the desolation the characters in them are in. People navigating through life with grief, feeling lost most times, on the cusp of or reaching realisation.

Sometimes, you encounter stories that actually make you feel glad that you're alive to have read them, and it truly seems that life, or part of its essence, has been distilled into fiction. A point of convergence hard to define or explain; where what the writer dedicated time and effort to melds exquisitely into what the reader perceives and understands to be truth when reading. It goes beyond relatability which is simply recognition of the familiar, it is perfect understanding as it needs no explanation. And I think this is the reason that I read. Not to escape life in its troubles or mundanity, not for excitement or for whatever stimulation we get from that which frightens, enthralls, saddens, or stirs passion and need, but to encounter all this which sounds mystical and rather foolish, but which I open each new book with the hope of finding again. And I'm glad I found it in this collection. show less

The stories in this collection touch the darkness of life and I like that. Too-young adults live with death walking behind them, married couples fail to please each other, children suffer indignities...it's all here, the kind of stuff thrown at most of us at one time or another but maybe not broadcast to the world. Why ignore it? It's part of us and we're better for it. Good literature should reflect that. Thus does Joy Williams pass my test.