{"product_id":"ninetynine-stories-of-god-isbn-9781947793170","title":"Ninety-Nine Stories of God","description":"\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year at \u003ci\u003eEsquire, Seattle Times, Minnesota Star Tribune, Huffington Post, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Publishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom “quite possibly America’s best living writer of short stories” (NPR), \u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e finds Joy Williams reeling between the sublime and the surreal, knocking down the barriers between the workaday and the divine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Joy Williams\u003c\/b\u003e has a one-of-a-kind gift for capturing both the absurdity and the darkness of everyday life. In \u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e, she takes on one of mankind’s most confounding preoccupations: the Supreme Being.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It’s the \u003ci\u003eBook of Common Prayer\u003c\/i\u003e as seen through a looking glass—a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams’s characters, however, are like the rest of us: anonymous strivers and bumblers who brush up against God in the least expected places or go searching for Him when He’s standing right there. The Lord shows up at a hot-dog-eating contest, a demolition derby, a formal gala, and a drugstore, where he’s in line to get a shingles vaccination. At turns comic and yearning, lyric and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God serves as a pure distillation of one of our great artists.Wry and playful, except for when densely allusive and willfully obtuse, \u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e is \u003cb\u003ea treasure trove of bafflements and tiny masterpieces.\u003c\/b\u003e\n—The New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[The stories in \u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e] miniaturize the qualities found in Joy Williams’s celebrated short stories: concision, jumped connections, singular details, brutal humor. I say “celebrated” because Williams has been writing stories for forty years, and for forty years her literary peers—from Ann Beattie to Raymond Carver, from James Salter to Don DeLillo—have regarded her work with a kind of Masonic fellow-feeling. Yet she remains, in some ways, a difficult, and certainly an original, writer. She writes at a slight angle to the culture, literary and otherwise. \u003cb\u003eHer fiction is easy to follow and hard to fathom; easy to enjoy and harder to absorb\u003c\/b\u003e.\n—James Wood, The New Yorker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[Q]uietly splendid. . . . I believe in art, and \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e feels like prayer to me\u003c\/b\u003e.\n—Boston Globe\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot many writers can launch a premise like “The Lord was in line at the pharmacy counter waiting to get His shingles shot” without falling into gimmickry, but Williams—long known as a master story writer—twists the scenario to an eerily moving effect. \u003cb\u003eIn manipulating our most deeply rooted expectations, shooting them through a prism of irony and wonder, she has created a cockeyed book of common prayer.\u003c\/b\u003e\n—San Francisco Chronicle\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBaffling and illuminating, witty and disturbing\u003c\/b\u003e, these 99 religious-flavored vignettes may not tell you why we are here or where we are going, but they do possess the power to entrance. The divine Joy Williams continues to work in mysterious ways.\n—The Minnesota Star Tribune, Best Fiction of the Year\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSly and wonderful\u003c\/b\u003e. . . . [Williams is] after some big truths in a few words, stories so short that some of them could fit on Twitter, except they're too smart and not mean enough. \n—The Seattle Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA collection of fiction for our fractured times from a modern master\u003c\/b\u003e — funny, profound and redemptive.\n—The Seattle Times, Best Books of 2016\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWilliams says more in a page-long scene than most can say in a chapter; it's fitting, then, that her very short collection \u003cb\u003emanages to encompass such an eternal theme with wit and grace.\u003c\/b\u003e\n—Huffington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e[Williams] is ... a master of momentum\u003c\/b\u003e; the stories in \u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e end and snap, end and snap, their wit yanking you up and dressing you down right when you get a rhythm going.\n—The Week\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRead together, \u003cb\u003eJoy Williams’ stories are a humanist manifesto\u003c\/b\u003e, a celebration of our most mysterious values, desires and prejudices.\n—Huffington Post, Best Fiction of 2016\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRead together, \u003cb\u003eJoy Williams’ stories are a humanist manifesto\u003c\/b\u003e, a celebration of our most mysterious values, desires and prejudices.\n—Huffington Post, Best Fiction of 2016\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWilliams addicts will mainline [\u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e];\u003c\/b\u003e newcomers should chase the high with last year’s \u003ci\u003eThe Visiting Privilege\u003c\/i\u003e.\n—New York Magazine\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile Marilynn Robinson (stately, assured) is so often held up as the major Christian believer in American letters, I would argue that, along with Annie Dillard, Joy Williams is the true seeker. \u003cb\u003eHer stories are probes sent out into the universe.\u003c\/b\u003e\n—Oxford American\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMasterly . . . Ms. Williams is her usual funny, irreverent self.—The New York Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJoy Williams is one of America's greatest living writers.\u003c\/b\u003e\n—VICE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003cb\u003eJoy Williams is our contemporary O'Connor\u003c\/b\u003e with a mix of Protestant sacraments . . . and a Zen Koan consciousness.\"\n—The Los Angeles Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eEvery Joy Williams publication is a cause for celebration\u003c\/b\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e shows Williams in her usual biting, insightful, and darkly humorous form.\n—Electric Literature, Best Short Story Collections of 2016\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEach story is beautifully strange and meditative in an unexpected but glorious way. . . . \u003cb\u003eInarguably inspired, \u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e is a devotional for modern cynics and believers alike.\u003c\/b\u003e\n—Lenny Letter\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e is \u003cb\u003egorgeously written\u003c\/b\u003e, sentence-to-sentence, and arrives in vignettes that are condensed but not constrained, tight but not dry.\n—The Millions\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeirdly soothing\u003c\/b\u003e . . . The best approach is to read \u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e all in one shot, and then dip in randomly thereafter, at your darkest and dimmest hour, finding solace.\n—The Ringer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eEach story in this collection shoots like a flare over the abyss of our existential dilemma\u003c\/b\u003e, flashing the briefest light on the depths below and above.\n—Eugene Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMagnificent\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003eimaginative, and moving. \u003c\/b\u003e\n—Read It Forward\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMuch like the divine, Williams’ prose is simple and brutal, thoughtful and haunting. \u003cb\u003eA spare but startling book.\u003c\/b\u003e\n—Booklist, STARRED REVIEW\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAdmirers of Williams—and anyone who treasures a story well told should be one—will find much to like here.\u003c\/b\u003e\n—Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe most beguiling book of the summer is this little collection of 99 very short stories about God. The catch is that the brilliantly twisted Joy Williams is behind the stories, which means the Lord finds himself at a hotdog-eating contest or in line for a shingles vaccination. \u003cb\u003eMayhem, humor, and death mark this transcendent book.\u003c\/b\u003e\n—Publishers Weekly, Best Books of Summer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[T]hese stories are 100% Williams: funny, unsettling, and mysterious, to be puzzled over and enjoyed across multiple readings.—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI would follow the trail of Joy Williams’s words—always beautiful, compelling, and so wise—anywhere they led.—Chuck Palahniuk, author of CHOKE and FIGHT CLUB\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese modern fables and skewed vignettes make the implausible plausible. Compression, as done by Joy Williams, extends the reach of her stories.—Amy Hempel, author of AT THE GATES OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEach story, like living tissue, is a reliquary that makes something splendid of our most secret agonies and desires.—Darcey Steinke, author of SISTER GOLDEN HAIR\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese stories are as full of surprises as a Noah’s Ark filled with mystical beasts, three of each.—Edmund White, author of A BOY'S OWN STORY\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoy Williams’s \u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e reads like a blog-era bible as conceived by Borges, Barthelme, and Mark Twain. No writer alive captures the voices in the post-millennial psychic wilderness like Joy Williams.\n—Jerry Stahl, author of PERMANENT MIDNIGHT\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe word count of this slender, extraordinary collection belies the density and combustibility of its contents, their midnight hilarity and edgeless reach. Joy Williams is our feral philosopher.—Karen Russell, author of VAMPIRES IN THE LEMON GROVE\u003cb\u003eJoy Williams\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of five novels, including \u003ci\u003eThe Quick and the Dead\u003c\/i\u003e and most recently \u003ci\u003eHarrow\u003c\/i\u003e, five collections of stories, including \u003ci\u003eConcerning the Future of Souls\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eNinety-Nine Stories of God\u003c\/i\u003e, as well as \u003ci\u003eIll Nature\u003c\/i\u003e, a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Among her many honors are the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, the Paris Review’s Hadada Award, and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to which she was elected in 2008. She lives in Arizona and Wyoming.","brand":"Tin House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233435070693,"sku":"NP9781947793170","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781947793170.jpg?v=1767733763","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/ninetynine-stories-of-god-isbn-9781947793170","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}