There are twelve stories in Joy Williams's short story collection Escapes. My sincerest apologies from the bottom of the swampy cesspool that is my heart because I'm only going to write about a few of them. I might go back and add more later because writing not good enough Joy Williams reviews on goodreads is just something that I like to do. Okay! (Okay, some of you might be thinking "Just write something about all the stories in some neat paragraph thingy. No one wants to read that much about

So. One of my most beloved reviewers on this lovely site goes by the name of Mariel. Every single one of the pieces she writes and posts on GR is a thing of great beauty. If you have not discovered her yet, go click on the name in the "recommended by" tag on this review and read some of her work. If they don't make you immediately start adding things to your TBR list then there is something wrong with you...Anyway. She has long championed Joy Williams and, because of her reviews, I got hold of T...

Joy Williams is always doing two or three or four (amazing)things at once. She's simultaniously enchanting, delightful, disturbing, strange and twisted, but this somehow always leads to a pleasurable experience and she is never a dull read. This is one of her darker, sadder collections in many ways, and that suits me just fine. I think I have a bit of a crush on this wacky woman.

Escapes and The Blue Men were the best stories from a well-written, funny collection. I think Williams' stories can be like drinking a cold glass of ginger ale after reading too much, say, Lorrie Moore. Williams can be one hilarious writer and these two stories are the funniest of the bunch. Rot and The Skater are also very good. Since the book is on loan from the library I think I'm going to go upstairs and photocopy Escapes, just so I can have it until I buy a copy.

I'm embarrassed to resort to a dopey cliche but Joy Williams really has "the magic touch." I loved all these stories with the exception of "The Route." Otherwise I can't help but mention that the drawing adorning the cover was an unfortunate choice. Really bad. Oh well, no reflection on the stories.

Williams definitely falls into the Raymond Carver category but with a good female twist (and minus Gordon Lish's editorializing, making it not as minimalist as Carver). The functional alcoholics are often deadpan funny; the children are precocious and weird in way that you can't quite stop reading about them, especially since the adults seem to find them annoying, as well. I agree with other readers who found the first half of this book a bit better than the second. In flipping back through the

On the cover, Harold Brodkey blurbs: "Joy Williams is now the most gifted writer of her generation." Hard to disagree with Harold Brodkey. So many fine stories here. Favorites include: "Health," "The Little Winter," "The Blue Men," and "Escapes." Also love "Rot" and "The Last Generation."

"Clouds aren't as pretty as they used to be. That's a known fact." One of the best lines from one of the best stories ("The Last Generation") from one of the best short story writers ever. (Sadly, Williams' novels just don't do it for me in the same way, though some people really like them.) This collection, however, is excellent. There are, perhaps, one or two misses, but all the rest of them are pure beauty. I really like "The Skater" and the title story. And "The Farm," which may be in this b...

I like this book.I like the second story very much. I like the last story and many of the other stories.

I don't think Joy Williams is quite for me, although I thought this book of stories was quite good. The stories I didn't like weren't bad or badly written, but they were perhaps about people whose stories I didn't care much about reading (the story White is a good example of this). This is not the fault of Joy Williams.I should also mention that I read Health first, and then I went back and read the whole book in order. I liked Health a great deal but I think it gave me some misapprehensions abo...

Oh these are very good. I just finished the final story “The Last Generation.” I’m awed by the pacing. As well as for the preceding one “The Blue Men.” Such a powerful employment of time in her storytelling. Or maybe it’s how time is rendered, how it feels, that impresses me. From the story “White” in a scene where a woman is interacting with another I wrote down this excerpt:‘This was the way it was supposed to be, she thought. Memory and conversation, clarification and semblance, miscalculatio...

I used to enjoy listening to Joe Frank's show "Work in Progress" on NPR and Joy Williams' work reminds me a lot of those disturbing broadcasts. I liked the one about the gutted out decaying car in the living room and the husband who wouldn't talk to his wife unless she sat in that stupid car. Great stuff.

Funny, sometimes dreamy, sometimes disorienting stories. It is a delight to read more of Williams’ writing.

One story in this book is called "Escapes," about a young girl's love for her depressed, alcoholic mother (and her mother's love for her only companion, the girl). The language and storytelling are simultaneously tactful and childlike. There are marvelous little visions and surprising metaphors that manage to avoid being oppressive as an overt style or authorial voice. All except for the final paragraph, which becomes too elegiac and self-consciously wise. This is the second-to-last paragraph, w...

Masterful, brilliant, always interestingIt'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

My library copy is inscribed: "For Chris and Kipp (nice sound!) Joy Williams Chicago 1991." It is possible I've read this entire book before and don't remember. Although many of the stories here confused and bored me, the title story is excellent and unique (especially compared to Room, which I recently read) in that it's from a woman's point of view remembering her childhood in a close and childlike way, but using high language. An example: "Lady... the magician said, and I thought a dog might

SHE'S JUST SO GOOD! "Pammy coughs. She doesn't want to hear other people's voices. It is as though they are throwing away junk, the way some people use words, as though one word was good as another." Throwing away words is one thing Joy Williams does not do. Every word is everything that's needed. "Walter rubbed his head with his hands. He looked around the room, at some milk on the floor that Tommy had spilled. The house was empty except for them. There were no animals around, nothing. It was a...

There's something to be said for the Gordon Lish influenced minimalism of writers of this generation, and Williams's stories are sparse, direct, emotionally objective in that way. Although I can admire the gaunt plots and characters who sometimes seem like they're standing aslant (or trying to stand straight in a slanted world), I've hit the place in my reading life where I want more....

This was less consistent than Honored Guest, but some of theses stories are even better than any from that book. "Health" and "The Last Generation" I particularly admired, as well as "Rot", "Escapes", "The Skater", and "The Blue Men." But "Gurdjieff in the Sunshine State" made no sense and "The Route" was pretty bad. I'm still going with 4 stars, though, because the good ones here were really good.

Some of the stories in this book, particularly the first half, were utterly brilliant in innovative form and startling content. And then there were some disappointments. Despite the unevenness, I had to admire the daring.