{"id":7149,"date":"2016-12-30T06:24:39","date_gmt":"2016-12-30T06:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7149"},"modified":"2017-01-02T12:38:08","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T12:38:08","slug":"the-visiting-privilege-by-joy-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7149","title":{"rendered":"The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Serpent\u2019s Tail\/Tuskar Rock 3 November 2016 UK, Knopf 2015 US
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

412pp, hardback, \u00a316.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Emerging from forty-six stories by veteran American writer Joy Williams, the reader may shake her head and rub her eyes as if returning from a journey into another world.\u00a0 For Williams – like Jean Rhys, or Stevie Smith, or Edward Hopper – has a very particular take on life.\u00a0 These frank, surreal tales unroll before us like a kind of intimate newsreel, taking us right inside the daily lives of so-called \u2018ordinary people\u2019 to reveal shocking degrees of loneliness.\u00a0 In Williamsworld, everyone is alone.\u00a0 The young are atomized, ruthless; the adults are stranded, as if in a limitless penitentiary where small personal aims and activities tide them over through what many perceive as a purposeless void.\u00a0 Plants, pets, lucky charms, fortune-telling and inadvisable attachments or feuds fill their hours.<\/p>\n

Death is everywhere seen as the major event. In \u2018Taking Care\u2019, Jones, the preacher, wears his heart on his sleeve (\u2018awkward and unfortunate, something that shouldn\u2019t be seen\u2019) like a freak.\u00a0 His dying wife \u2018is a swimmer waiting to get on with the drowning\u2019.\u00a0 Somehow they stagger on and he brings her home to die in \u2018the shining rooms\u2019 he has prepared for her.<\/p>\n

Deadpan horror sits on the page repeatedly, as in \u2018Winter Chemistry\u2019, where two girls are alone on the beach \u2018except for two people drowning\u2019.\u00a0 They sit, \u2018eating potato chips, unable to decide if the people were drowning or if they were just having a good time. Even after they disappeared, the girls could not believe they had really done it.\u00a0 They went \"\"<\/a>home and the next day read about it in the newspapers.\u2019<\/p>\n

Of black humour there is also plenty, as in \u2018The Little Winter\u2019, in which Gloria reflects that \u2018every person is on the brink of eternity every moment\u2019.\u00a0 She steals a dog, and somebody else\u2019s daughter.\u00a0 In the motel, while the dog gnaws \u2018peaceably on the bed rail\u2019, the daughter offers to paint her nails or do her hair.\u00a0 \u2018With a little training, Gloria thought, this kid could be a mortician.\u2019<\/p>\n

In \u2018White\u2019, we get a flash of insight into the depths of Joan, who, with her husband Bliss is throwing a farewell garden party for their priest. \u2018The worst has already happened\u2019 for Joan, who has lost two living babies: \u00a0\u2018She referred to the days behind her as \u201cthose so-called days\u201d.\u2019\u00a0 Neither the priest nor the guests know \u2018the terrible way she thinks\u2019.<\/p>\n

There is a lot of \u2018terrible thinking\u2019 in these stories.\u00a0 In \u2018The Last Generation\u2019, his older brother\u2019s girlfriend, Audrey, tells nine-year-old Tommy that comparisons are pointless:\u00a0 \u2018Similes are a crock.\u00a0 There\u2019s no more time for similes.\u00a0 There used to be that kind of time, but no more.\u00a0 You shouldn\u2019t see what you\u2019re seeing thinking it looks like something else.\u00a0 They haven\u2019t left us with much but the things that are left should be seen as they are.\u2019<\/p>\n

Joy Williams is expert in seeing things as they are. Some of her descriptions of people are startlingly precise. Before she steals the dog and the daughter, Gloria in \u2018The Little Winter\u2019 sees another distressed woman at the airport, looking \u2018the very picture of someone who had recently ceased to be cherished\u2019.\u00a0 In \u2018Bromeliads\u2019, an intense young woman is captured as \u2018a thin, hasty, troubling girl with exact and joyless passions\u2019.\u00a0 And always there is the voice, which may or may not express Williams\u2019s own feelings on the matter in question:\u00a0 \u2018Imagination is not what it\u2019s cracked up to be\u2019,\u00a0 \u2018We\u2019re all alone in a meaningless world\u2019, \u2018People have lost their interest in reality\u2019.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*A 2016 Notable Book<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

These frank, surreal tales unroll before us like a kind of intimate newsreel, taking us right inside the daily lives of so-called \u2018ordinary people\u2019 to reveal shocking degrees of loneliness. In Williamsworld, everyone is alone. The young are atomized, ruthless; the adults are stranded, as if in a limitless penitentiary where small personal aims and activities tide them over through what many perceive as a purposeless void […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7149"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7156,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7149\/revisions\/7156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}