99 Stories of God
Author:
Joy WilliamsPublisher:
Byliner, IncorporatedImprint:
Byliner FictionPublication Date:
04-25-2013ISBN:
9781614520788Subjects:
FictionReligious
Short Stories (single Author)
Available as:
Electronic book text, 9781614520788Description:
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 "99 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 that is by turns comic and yearning and Kafkaesque. Kafka himself makes an appearance (talking to a fish), as do Tolstoy, the Aztecs, Abraham and Sarah, and O. J. Simpson. 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:
"Have you ever had chicken pox?" asked the pharmacist.
"Of course," the Lord said.
"How did you hear about us?"
Herself the daughter of a minister, Joy Williams instinctively understands one sure truth about God: He always gets the last laugh.
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