I frequently have nightmares. They take two inarticulatable forms. There are no images in them at all. They are pure fear and dismay, a sense of the tremendous strength of the dark, a sense that I have not done what it was I knew I should have done.

I'm paralyzed by what I might say here. This is my favorite book. I think I first read it in 2011. I'm not usually good with time, but I think I'm right. I reread it to confirm that it's truly as ugly and as beautiful as I remembered."I can't understand why God made every tiny snowflake different and all these men the same.""I want to have him love me. The fact that he does already troubles both of us.""He couldn't imagine that there were people like me who had answers to questions no one would

I think I held off on this for so long because the description makes it sound sort of conventional, but it is NOT CONVENTIONAL, and I should have known better. We're talking about Joy here! This is a brilliant, inventive, strange, sometimes brutal, darkly funny novel. A novel which lives in the past, present, and future simultaneously. This is how we all live, with the past invading, the specter of death hanging over our present lives. Kate is disturbed, in great trouble, and this trouble propel...

I paused some dozen or so pages into this book to reflect upon a couple of matters that had arisen and become wedged against the rhythmic current of the narrative—firstly, that I was struggling to grasp what exactly what taking place within the lilting snapshot vignettes of a wounded girl's life that had passed before me; and, immediate upon this, that the whole was comprised of sentences, of a peculiar cadence and texture, whose stricken beauty and enigmatic allure held me utterly enthralled. I...

I still find it very difficult to articulate what it is about the stories and novels of Joy Williams that consumes me whole, petrifies me, pulverizes me, mends and unmends me. But I can say, for STATE OF GRACE, it is a book that does all of the above and more. It's viciously sad, desperately funny, solemn and strange, and atmospherically haunting in the way that all of her work is. But especially here, when reading this novel, one feels as if one is seeing the world for the first time as the way...

"If he were free," he says aloud, nodding toward the leopard, "he'd be hunting incessantly." He says the word with astonishment. "Incessantly."Did I tell you that my Jean Rhys kick of last month was because of Joy Williams? I shouldn't be surprised now, I guess. "Oh." State of Grace was Joy Williams' first novel, published in 1973, and it could be her own Jean Rhys novel if you squint hard enough at the very Jean Rhys cover of the woman on the couch to see the blood stains and ignored filth. (I

Was thinking about giving this three stars while reading the first section (of three) because I'm not always into the super descriptive biblically-tinged Southern Gothic style that she is operating in, but by the second section it had really grown on me and by the third I was totally blown away. Joy Williams is a sorcerer and every single word in this book is haunting and lonely and painfully beautiful! Emphasis on painful because it's beyond brutal, a story that jumps back and forth constantly

From p120"The Woman had given little cries. Her shanks were skinny, her shoulders gaunt. Her mouth had opened into a crooked O. Her teeth lay across it like tiny fishes waiting to be hatched. The Child had heard of this. Fishes born in their mothers' mouths, fleeing back there when in danger. The woman's mouth had closed with a moist sea sound. She had writhed briefly, she had straightened. Like a thick weed floating in the valley of the surf, her stomach plump and vulnerable as a seaweed's pod....

About 10% of the sentences in State of Grace don't make sense in a way I can parse, but the sound and arrangement of words is so hypnotic it hardly seems to matter. I would dip into this book on occasion and listen to the language croon its spare and cruel melody. And try not to recoil at the savage and squalid imagery it spawns.Part I & Part III could perhaps be described as the prose embodiment of wading through a polluted swamp. (Suffocating humidity; swarms of mosquitoes; dark sludge oozing

I read this novel in my graduate school years and I couldn't tell you what it was about. I just remember that I had a religious experience with it. That it was frightening and amazing, and that I felt shaken during and after, frequently, when I was reading it. A week ago I was in a friend's guest room and found it again. I picked it up and flipped it open, and I could feel, with a sort of weird feeling, what a profound impact this book had on my work. There are other works I could point to, wher...

Got this on an inter-library loan today so I'll have to start reading it tonight along with Great Expectations. Well ... I'm a ways into this after last night. I had to stop when I unconsciously slipped into skimming the stream of consciousness narration. Reading this made me think of William Faulkner, William H. Gass, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Denis Johnson, Cormac McCarthy, Michael Chabon(obscure wordism), Walker Percy, Alice Adams and Carson McCullers. Pro...

State of Grace passes the page ninety test in that, if, like me, you too are initially put off by the rapid, staccato one-line sentences, hold on—because from that point onwards (view spoiler)[ i.e. the Jaguar accident scene onwards (hide spoiler)] this book proves big time why this NBA nominee made Joy Williams' reputation.Book Two gave me the goosebumps. Reminded me of Faulkner & Hawthorne with its religious themes of sin & man's fallen state & a blind groping towards a state of grace.This Par...

Torrid, gorgeous, challenging, frustrating, stunning. I'm just going to reproduce the opening paragraph below:"There is no warning of daylight here. It is strange to know that it is only twenty miles to the Gulf of Mexico and all that dizzying impossible white light, for here there is such darkness. Here when one can see the sky, it is almost always blue, but the trees are so thick nothing can make its way through them. Not the sun or the wind. And the ground never dries. The yard is rich mud wi...

Language is a poor medium to convey a nightmare. Dark memory is a rooted sorrow and we are incapable of excising those tendrils. Think of the last time you tried to convey the horror of a really bad nightmare to a loved one and recall how difficult is was to explain the dream, to explain your terror. That part of our mind is fettered. Perhaps for good reason.Joy Williams' prose in State of Grace is the perfect unfurling of nightmare made cogent. In tight, staccato sentences that combined make an...

State of Grace, Joy Williams's first novel, was nominated for a National Book Award. I don't pay much attention to literary awards, but I think Williams's talent deserves formal recognition. It is the last of her novels that I've read and it bears certain hallmarks of her fiction that would follow. Namely, a peculiar-to-her strain of American Gothic replete with the desperation that comes with living in the dirty sweaty South⁠—with Williams, often Florida⁠—or just with living in general. Her cha...

Joy Williams writes well, which doesn’t mean everything is clear in her first novel, A STATE OF GRACE. Most of the book is told by the protagonist who hints at a tragic past and lives in a present that feels destined to doom. Her language is both over-ripe like a fat juicy piece of fruit that hangs heavy from a tree, but it’s never sickly sweet - almost mythic in its power. The bits of plot or really episodes that made it through the sentences, which are revealing and protective at the same time...

If you are reading something that isn't "State of Grace," and not written by Joy Williams and you think, "Now the revolution has begun." You are wrong, what you are reading is only a dim echo of the revolution.

I'm a HUGE fan of Joy's short stories but this novel didn't work for me. Sustaining that capricious, magical, lyrical style throughout 300 pages... I just think her style is better suited to the short story.

You’ll sit with this one a while long after you’ve finished just to gather your thoughts. Dark. Sad. Stream of consciousness. What’s actually happening is left open to interpretation. You’ll probably feel a little ill yourself after finishing while praying this truly was a work of fiction. “People go, you know. It’s only you that remains. That’s the way it will be. It takes years to learn to be still.”

The writing/language throughout was stunning, many lines were highlighted just because of the language. Overall the story left me with a cold, sad, intense feeling--a kind of mourning. So many people died, it seemed. Even though there was new life at the end. And a feeling of stillness, peace, letting go, hope. But that was only for a few pages. The rest was pretty bleak. But still, good writing. Interesting use of the first person in the first and last section, but omniscient in the middle sect...