How high? - that high Stories

Review by Booklist Review

Williams' latest collection features characters who grapple with the tenors and entrapments of their lives and relationships. A virtuoso of short fiction, Williams presents 34 stories, the majority of which are no more than three pages long, that possess a sense of mystery part and parcel with life itself. The raw brevity of Williams' whip-smart vignettes often cuts straight to the bone upon their conclusion. In "One Muggy Spring," a woman meets a friend for lunch, divulges the latest updates on her family, and perhaps shares an uneasy disappointment with them; then a sudden rainstorm forces her to reconsider her role as a mother and a woman. In "Stick," a spontaneous hopscotch game opens up one character's memories of a former relationship. Many characters find themselves questioning their worth or predicaments as time has passed, and relationships have shifted or slipped away. A cowboy's wife wonders what could have been. An unexpected visitor, real or imaginary, summons thoughts of a married woman's her first love. Williams' sharply drawn narratives, shrewdly open to interpretation, are bold, provoking, and delightfully unpredictable.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Williams (Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine) returns with a collection showcasing her mastery of succinct and suggestive stories. The pristine and opaque "Upper Loop" begins with a question: "I'm trying to think if there's any reason for having fun anymore on any level?" Many of the stories seek to answer this by digging into the mundanity of aging. "Grief in Moderation" explores a woman's loss of connection with her husband despite routine gestures of intimacy--a kiss, sharing a bed. The theme is explored further in "Feel and Hold," which begins with observations from the narrators' aging friends, the Rotches. They'd seen a vendor feeling and holding a cut of meat, and they contrast the action with their own lives ("When we hold a thing--I am not so sure we feel it"). Later, the narrator wryly observes of Mrs. Rotch: "Her heart gets so much assistance from a pacemaker that sometimes I think she is unable to die." "Nick Should Be Fun to Be With" consists of snapshots of a couple's fidelity and the dull blur of middle-class suburbia. Williams's 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. Agent: Alexis Hurley, InkWell Management. (Oct.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Williams is a magician of the miniature. Her 10th book of short fiction features 34 stories, all in the span of 128 pages. But 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. Williams sets the stage in "Upper Loop," which opens the collection. "I am trying to think if there's any reason for having fun anymore on any level?" she (or her anonymous narrator) wonders. "I know that that's not the kind of thing people usually talk about." That pair of sentences might stand as a thesis statement for the entire book. Williams' characters--if we can call them that; many are rumors of characters, impressions--are aging, lost, and often lonely, trying to come to grips with where they are. "Now her heart gets so much assistance from a pacemaker," one observes of a neighbor, "that sometimes I think she is unable to die." And yet, rather than frustrate us, the elusiveness only draws us in. "She'll Love Me for It" offers a vivid snapshot of a grieving woman before raising this surprising question: "Where is her capacity for being a sly tease? for being playful?" In less than two pages, the story gives us layers, multitudes. Something similar might be said of all the pieces here, which are rigorous in both language and emotion, using nuance and inference to explore the implications, the contradictions, that people rarely share aloud. "On her stovetop, for example," Williams writes in the magnificent "What Is Given With Pleasure and Received With Admiration?" "an iron pot she owns has been scoured and scooped out even more than she has." Williams' small gems are as dense and beautiful as diamonds, compressed from the carbon of daily life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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UPPER LOOP I am trying to think if there's any reason for having fun anymore on any level? I know that that's not the kind of thing people usually talk about. God forbid--so I scale the roof all the way to the ridge and I have never had to climb down. GARDEN MAGIC I took a step further to meet Horace for health, for love, for a leg up. And at Horace's everything was gray there with some white accents--and the walls were gray, not paint. They were hung with fabric and he had a gray carpet on the floor. Once, before I knew him well, I asked Horace to dinner and after that he was always saying that he'd be right over for a chicken dinner, but usually I visited him in his apartment across the street. His place was very tidy and a bit surprising. He showed me his sword cane and his living room features an owl that's made of poultry feathers. This is a snowy owl that contains no real owl parts, but when I saw it for the first time--I had to ask whether it had been shot or euthanized. We got married and I should explain that I am tiny--a kind of skinny woman. You see, Horace says he likes to think of me as a young sailor boy or he may refer to me as a china doll and, for short, call me China. I moved in with him, and not long after, we waited in line to see the Czech film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders . And when we both saw Lila Melinek in the line up ahead, Horace stuck a finger between the cheeks of my backside. Even with my coat on, I was very much aware of the point of pressure. One day Lila forced her way into our apartment while I sat alone in another room. It was a bold and moody time. I heard Lila tell Horace, "The trouble with you!" "I'll try to be a better friend," Horace told her, "but I need to be with someone who knows French." I am that one. Oh, otherwise I heard murmurs and I did walk in to join them where they sat. Lila's hair hung down her back and I'd like to offer more about her, but I don't know what that would be. She is better than me? I put myself into a chair and watched them, except some of the time I kept an eye on the owl who also pressed on my nerves. "When can you go?" I asked her. "I'll return," she said, and she stood. And she's not meek, but still she's waifish, with babyish hands and oversize antlike eyes. I had the impression that Lila wanted to belong to our family and in several ways Lila and I are likely alike, although I'm not one to come up with plausible ideas of myself. Horace said, after she'd left us, "She's my Georgia peach. What do you want for me?" That's what I thought he said. But what he said was, "What do you want from me?" Well, she did take him away when she came again. I am in a room with . . . I am in a room where decisions are unlikely to be thought out, where I lack strong enough character and vital drive to take my dark thoughts and plant them at the right time like spring bulbs. GRIEF IN MODERATION A necessary and great object of interest--he had first found Valentina standing among other members of her family. Her clothes were a shocking pink color and as her wet hair dried, it began beguilingly to curl. And she was fragrant and Tom thought she was showy. She is not common in the wild. And lots of other people still go up to her and consider her the way Tom does. Most persistently, she brings into view a face that displays full-bodied welcome. One weekday evening, in a local restaurant, a very tall drunk man walked over to the pair, kissed Valentina on the mouth, and then departed quickly. Tom had questions. It was a puzzling capper to a typical day. Tom, on that day at work, had closed out tax cases upon which no tax was due, and awaited a repairman to discuss the photocopier failure. And Valentina has responsibility for all of the patients on her hospital shift, as well as the building, and people are responsive to her, sometimes fervently. She did not respond, however, to Tom's questions. She kept at her meat. She might otherwise have been caught in contradictions, but then she backed up in her chair and she gave her husband her answers: But it isn't true. I don't recall. Sort of. Yes, I sometimes do. At bedtime Valentina lay on her back, arms at her sides, as did Tom. There was no intertwining and no tender touch that needed to become better still, except that their small-patterned wallpaper seemed to be excited the next morning. The tiny daisies were scored by the shadows of the slats of the venetian blinds and the stripes were shivering. And here at dawn was Valentina's instrumental smile! Her sign of sweetness that is the flying start, the fresh impetus, the feature on her face that creates her particular style. And in theory she well understands any person's right to have privacy; to challenge and to complain without fear of reprisal; to make known his or her wishes; to receive complete information. To be wrenched. Excerpted from How High? -- That High by Diane Williams All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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