Escapes: Stories

It's hard to say what Joy Williams's stories are about. Despair. Dissatisfaction. Indefinite yearnings. Alienation, maybe. They are populated with the unglamourous, the unstylish. Typically there is a central female character who is usually young, or at least younger than the other characters. She can be a little girl, as in the title story, "Escapes," or a teen as in "The Skater," or a woman in the last years of her youth as in "The Little Winter." Often she is being or has been raised by grandparents. Sometimes she is married to an older man, sometimes twice her age or more. She drinks hard liquor out of cups or a thermos, or martinis. Sometimes she's an alcoholic. She makes many observations, some startling. The men are always a bit bizarre or off center or not exactly right. Animals are often mentioned and make appearances, and technical language from biology is used in bits and pieces. Usually the girl wants to go somewhere or is going somewhere, but the destination isn't important, or maybe it is.Four of the twelve stories, "Bromeliads," "The Skater," "Health," and "The Blue Men" made The Best American Short Stories in 1978, 1985, 1986 and 1987. "Rot" appeared in Prize Stories 1988: The O. Henry Awards. Clearly, Joy Williams is at the top of her calling.I didn't understand all of the stories. This is nothing unusual. Short stories from the postmodern oeuvre as served up in Granta or The Antioch Review, or The Cornell Review, where some of these stories first appeared, or even in The Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker, sometimes leave me wondering if I missed something. Sometimes I re-read the story and I'm still not sure. Sometimes I realize something has happened, something has changed, just slightly, like a displacement in a distant landscape, and I feel a sense of significance. Or sometimes I don't.But something definitely happens in a Joy Williams story. It is revealed from deep within the story, or come upon, or realized en route. Thus we find that Gloria in "The Little Winter" is dying. This is revealed directly midway through. She is dying amidst a banal and boring existence, visiting a boring friend with many ex-husbands and her boring daughter. In "Lu-Lu" (the name for a rather large pet snake--the story has an element that reminds me distantly of Steinbeck's "A Snake of One's Own") Heather is leaving something behind ("an ugly nightie with its yearnings"), heading for a new life with Lu-Lu, whom the old couple she has been drinking with, have to let go. Like Gloria she is going off in an automobile with something vaguely grotesque, yet it is better than being by herself. Molly, from California, in "The Skater" is being shown New England prep schools where she is going to be sent. She is somehow symbolically or emotionally, or practically, going to the same place her tragically dead sister Martha went. Maybe. For some reason. In "Rot" Lucy's much older husband who is still friendly with his several

These short stories are like those of Raymond Carver (who, incidentally calls Joy Williams a "Wonder" on the back of my copy of escapes), except that they have a much more surreal atmosphere and very, very unusual characters. I haven't found any novel or book of stories that are as engrossing and deserving of readers as Joy Williams' stories are. It may take a while for you to get into the rythym, but you won't want to stop reading once you've caught on.

Like a melding of Jeanette Winterson with the ominous tones of Scott Heim or Janet Peery, Williams's set of stories is deeply affecting to readers. Lurking dangers affect each character in different ways. The most striking thing about her writing is the use of powerful metaphors that are almost subtle. Check out "Bromeliads", "The Little Winter", and the title story to taste what Joy Williams is about.