Honored Guest: Stories

The definitive Joy Williams short story collection. And by that I mean my favorite and her best. However everything she writes is pure brilliance and I doubt she could write a mediocre sentence if she tried. This collection is a great place to begin your introduction into this criminally underrated author. Why isn't she as well known as Joyce Carol Oates or Margaret Atwood? She should be. If you let it, this book will change you - as all the best writing does this taunts and flirts in equal measures - Joy is able to take things that we see/think/do every day and write them in a way that makes us wonder if we've ever really considered our lives or the ways in which we live them. Genius.

Joy Williams' collection of short stories, "Honored Guest", is a sobering account of lives unable to deal with death. The characters struggle to be happy, but the fog of a recent death or an approaching one, sometimes their own, proves to be an insurmountable obstacle. The title short story has the teenage Helen taking care of her terminally ill mother, Lenore. Helen learns of the aboriginal people called the Ainu and their sacred ritual: they would capture a bear cub, nurse, raise and treat the bear wonderfully as a "honored guest" till the time calls for its sacrifice. Helen summarizes the perspective of Williams' characters, "To live was like being an honored guest." Funerals, suicides, and illness dominate the stories while any happiness is approached with caution. The storylines are bleak and despondent, but the downward spiral lives are beautifully illustrated thanks to Williams' sword-sharp details and touches of black comedy. Helen relates a story about a classmate's failed suicide: "A girl had taken an overdose of Tylenol which of course did nothing at all, but word of it got out and when she came back to school her locker had been broken into and was full of Tylenol, just jammed with it." Williams' exploration of death will be uncomfortable for some readers. However, what is most frustrating is that none of the characters seem equipped to handle life or death. They act as helpless as the Ainu bear, the "honored guest." Bohdan Kot

Honored Guest is a remarkable book. I will not say that it is easy to read, because it is not; it is heartbreaking. I will not say that you will love and cheer for each of the characters, because you will not; they are flawed. I will say that if you are lucky enough to read this book, you will be shattered into a million shards and glued back together, over and over again. And it will be worth it. I could not read this book quickly. In fact, after reading the title story, "Honored Guest", I had to stop for a few days because I could not breathe. It is the heartbreaking story of a young woman living with her dying mother. There is no huge revelation at the end. All there is, is the knowledge that the mother will die and the girl will go on living. And yet, you feel as though you have come through something at the end. You feel as though you have made it. You have lived. And yes, maybe life is going to be crappier now, but you're still alive. No less harrowing is the final story, "Fortune", about a bunch of thoughtlessly cruel, disaffected 20-somethings (I'm guessing at their ages but it seems most likely they are in their early 20s) living in a foreign country who practice "concern" (as well as the other "more subtle emotions") by such acts as letting a beggar boy have a pancake off one's plate and taking in a stray dog (which hates being owned). None of the main characters are worth much and yet we are left with June and her desire. Her hope is that she will have or does have a personality. And even though these characters seem irredeemable there is still something so magical about this story. And what it is is that we are glad not to be those people. In the end, we are glad to be who we are-all safe and smug reading about them and knowing that we know how to feel. Each story offers us something. Few of the characters are people we would love but all of them show us something, some deep hateful part of ourselves. Some honest, dark pit. Something about our misanthrope or our lack of desire for life. About our tiredness or fear of death or sense of false hopefulness. Williams is funny (and so clever! Every few pages I would stop and say to myself, "My god she is clever") and interesting and smart as hell and so are her characters. She takes risks in her writing; point of view as we know it is irrelevant because it comes across as organic as opposed to contrived. She is a master of dialogue and often, monologue. She lets her narrators be smart and crazy and doesn't give a hoot whether we think they are unreliable or not. I don't get the feeling that she is about proving what a great writer she is; I get the feeling she just is a great writer. She exists that way. Pardon me while I gush, but I am in love with this book and with the writing of Joy Williams. I'm embarrassed to say that this is the first of her I've read but it will not be the last.

After I read these stories I looked at a review that called the stories "funny." I swore and had to read them all over again and damned if that reviewer wasn't right. I laughed all the way through 'em the second time. The first time I almost cried because her characters are so broken, so alienated, so deeply strange. It was only on a second read that I realized that ultimately all these freaks are full of hope, whether it's what most of us would call hope is immaterial. And it made me laugh, but not in a nice Hello Kitty kind of way, kinda in an I'm-going-to-flip-out-and-do-something-outlandish kind of way. The weird thing is, I look at the author photo and Williams looks like one of those women who exercises in the outdoors and walks vigorously everywhere. But man, that tanned face and toothy grin doesn't hide the fact that she's got a deep dark corner in her soul that pours strange and lonely magic onto the page. She's an original, a Southern Gothic of the Southwest.

Joy Williams is a treasure who deserves a broader readsership and a higher profile. If you haven't read her before, this collection is a fine place to start. It exemplifies everything that's distinct about her: a loopy, lyrical style, totally original points of view, and quirky characters that you actually care about. Among her novels, State of Grace is my favorite, though you really can't go wrong with any of Joy Williams' books. Check her out.