Publishers Weekly
03/04/2024
Williams follows up Ninety-Nine Stories of God with another resonant collection of 99 vignettes, this time centered on themes of environmental destruction and mortality. The entries—none longer than two pages and some as short as a single word—showcase Williams’s sly wit. In one, a woman’s entire life is traced through the trees she’s planted (an oak is “sheared and lopped to an unsurvivable degree” due to an “increase in broadband demand”). In another, a woman recalls how her husband proposed to her in skywriting, and how “the beginning was disappearing even before the end appeared.” Elsewhere, Williams delves into the strange death of monk Thomas Merton, who was found with a short-circuited fan lying on his body; and zooms in on Vladimir Nabokov on his deathbed, distraught that he’s no longer capable of stalking and extinguishing butterflies. Another entry depicts the day in 2021 when 1,400 dolphins were killed in the Faroe Islands. Interspersed throughout are brief episodes portraying the discomfort and fretfulness of Azrael, the angel of death, who is worried that “the mountains have been stripped of their holiness, the oceans of their mysteries.” As with the previous volume, these pieces riddle the reader’s mind with their exquisite enigmas. Williams continues to astonish. Agent: Amelia Atlas, CAA. (July)Correction: A previous version of this review incorrectly stated that the entries are untitled.
A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 LitHub
"She’s the story writer of our time, choosing to shine light on the wreckage and the difficult choices that lay ahead: all we have to do is listen."
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2024-04-19
The angel of death, Washoe the chimp, and T.S. Eliot share the stage in Williams’ enchanting collection of 99 short-short stories.
“The older dog’s death”: This is one complete entry in Williams’ lyrical set of 99 stories about death, its number nicely echoing Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante turns up, to be sure. Williams’ tales, though, more often concern Azrael, the archangel who escorts souls to meet God, and the devil, with whom Azrael has some pointed exchanges: “Death and I are not the same,” Azrael insists, to which the devil replies, “A difference without distinction.” On occasion they agree—for instance, that crows and ravens “are marvelous,” belonging to the same genus just as, by the devil’s calculus, do spirit and soul. More often, the devil thwarts Azrael, an innocently guileless psychopomp who asks in all seriousness, remembering the song “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” whether the devil’s “stupendous and tireless herd were entirely red...and what did yippie i oh yippie i ay mean anyway?” Even when the two aren’t present in Williams’ glimmering stories, they’re close by as her characters maneuver toward death, one woman expressing the wish to be buried with her horse, and Vladimir Nabokov approaching the end with tears in his eyes in the knowledge that he’ll no longer be able to chase butterflies. The sensitive reader will likely come away from Williams’ little book having shed a few tears, too, sharing with the writer the sad realization that the world is coming to an end in careless human hands, their victims such blameless creatures as snakes, whose “existence underground kept the earth from falling apart,” and manatees. Happily, in Williams’ telling, the souls of animals go to greet God, too, thanks to Azrael’s devoted service.
Elegantly poetic—and often archly funny—meditations on death by a superb writer.
