I hear you're rich Stories

Williams (How High?--That High) explores the pleasures and disappointments of adulthood in this distinctive collection. "Oriel?" the crystalline opener, begins with the pregnant narrator serving a cake at her mother-in-law's place. Walking back to her own home, she considers naming her baby Clara, "which means shining and bright," as her gaze settles on dark shadows under a tree. In "Zwip-Zwip," a mother watches her grown son play with a toy called an Easy Disk while her grandson crawls and cries, craving their attention. The narrator of "We Had a Lot of Fun Dancing" recounts the awkward sex he had with an older woman he met at costume party as a young man ("I had little experience. Eventually, I landed in the right place"). Nevertheless, the woman expresses a desire to see him again, which simultaneously excites and rattles him, because he doesn't see a future with her. Williams's blend of precision and understatement make her insights on her characters' fears and limitations cut deeply while leaving the stories open to interpretation. This will leave readers aching in all the best ways. (Aug.)

Miniscule stories from a master of the form. In her latest collection, Williams delivers another serving of the teaspoon-sized stories with which she's made her career. Some are as brief as a sentence or two while others span several pages. Either way, her sentences are constructed with an equally exquisite attention to detail. In "The Tune," a narrator whistles along with a whistling bird. "He was my creature briefly," Williams writes. "We didn't even vary the volume." That beauty at the granular level comes as a godsend because it's sometimes difficult to say what these stories are about--or even what is happening on a literal level. Williams' leaps in logic can seem to contain the width of continents. " 'I am afraid I've overdone it,' Connie said, and she patted her belly, and from the street I heard a hammer that was hitting metal somewhere," Williams writes in the title story. It's nearly impossible to categorize Williams' work. She interrogates both the mundane and the metaphysical ("Could there be a speck of my original self anywhere?--that I have left behind"). In story after story, she upends what readers have grown to expect from traditional narratives--a beginning, middle, and end, to say the least--sometimes leaving us without any of those elements at all. A Williams story might be made up of a fragment of dialogue, a thought, a description, or some combination of these. But reading one after the other, something improbable occurs: The stories, in their very unpredictability, start to become predictable. You may not know where the stories will go, but you might start guessing where they won't go. Mysterious, gemlike, and strange, these stories end up oddly predictable by defying narrative conventions in similar ways. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Oriel? We were in the room where there is often a deep stream of daylight. And my husband's mother had made sunshine cake for us, but since she did not like to walk--it hurt her legs--I was the one who carried the platter with the sumptuous cake to the table. But where best to look as I went forward? At the cake? Or at their faces? This task takes common sense and balance as do all my others. What to name our baby?--a sobriquet that means rich? Why not helper of humankind?--ardent or dawn? Deirdre, I like, but the name means sorrow--or Oriel? So we ate cake and claimed happiness for the birth event that will come soon enough and the name I prefer for our daughter is Clara--which means shining and bright. And on our walk home I noted leaves much darker than others toward the center of a tree that I focused on. The shape of the shadows? A scrap of a shadow maintained its roundness and then that shadow started to move and next I felt a sharp tapping on my back, caused by a stiff prod--by a wand of some sort, but when I turned to look, I saw no pointed object, and no one. My husband, Stephen, said, "Jean, what's wrong?" He said, "Which is it?" A girlish figure with her children and with their full voices in tow, casually passed us by, while spreading loving-kindness and grace, which I think may have become fashionable. The Tune Several birds had worms in their mouths, but one did not, and he whistled. I whistled. The whistling bird flew a bit beyond me and then settled again on the fence and I pursued him with the only tune I could manage until he answered back while he jumped to the ground at my feet. He was my creature briefly. We didn't even vary the volume. What I like best is taking my pleasure alongside somebody I barely know in such spasms. Start Here I got to the building that was a church that had a high ceiling and a long stair going down and a woman was coming after me, an elderly woman, but I didn't know her name. She was in a hurry. She said, "Tell the pastor that I saw you." I said okay, but I didn't remember who the pastor was or the woman's name. Why didn't I just tell the woman that? I just said okay to please her and it was dishonest. And even though I was indoors, I thought, Let's see if I can fly, and I was floating around. People were looking at me and I said, "Don't try to do this! This takes a lot of practice." I was happy and I was chubby. I had on some kind of woolen clothing. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't flown? A Slew of Attractions I was Diane Williams leaving town and I had left my family behind too, as well as a situation that had overwhelmed me. My seatmate slept and we had an undemanding climb into the air, as the Airbus carried us above a slew of attractions. And then we endured the severe stress of turbulence that lasted for too long, but the steward said he was not concerned and that the wings of the plane can bend quite easily to accommodate such trouble--and to show me how, he stretched his arms up high above his head. The cabin was dim and then light entered at a low angle and further illumined the pages of my book. My seatmate inquired about the book that tells a story much like my own. It is necessarily controlled and the personalities are abstracted. The novel is Murder in Estoril by Edith Templeton. My seatmate said, "Life! This is the way to look at it!" It was a cloud she pointed to that had flanking branches, fancy curly touches, and a generous nature that had to be the creation of a god who had forgotten how angry she is. We heard for the trip's remainder the shifting of some invisible plane parts that made a low-grade cracking sound that I had to worry over. On land, as in the air, I check the timepiece I wear often. Its second hand seems to tremble when it advances and its dial presents such a modern face. My own face is old style. I have seen my face in a seventeenth-century painting, A Girl and Her Duenna . The duenna is extremely amused and her eyes are my eyes, as is the tint of her skin and her forehead's contour. She presses a kerchief against her mouth and chin and she will guffaw for ages--has done. And do you know where I am this minute?--do you? Where I am has an urban flavor and I ask myself to please make plain what my laughing matters are. Excerpted from I Hear You're Rich 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.