Ninety-Nine Stories of God
Joy Williams
[Tin House Press]
If there were a soundtrack to Pulitzer Prize-nominee Joy Williams’ 99 Stories of God it would have to be Joan Osborne’s 1995 release, One of Us, which famously featured the recurring chorus, “What if God was one of us/Just a slob like one of us/Just a stranger on the bus/Trying to make His way home?” This was certainly the tune I was humming throughout my reading of Williams’ collection, although thankfully it is missing some of the saccharine preaching of that mid-’90s classic.
These 99 engaging, minimalist pieces straddle multiple forms – flash fiction, poetry, fable and parable – but despite the title of the collection, this is not a gathering of stories laden with theology and the benefits of faith. Rather Williams’ off-beat pieces feature a God who appears in everyday settings, from demolition derbies to the pharmacy, to mingle with humans in a world of random chaos and coincidence.
Williams plays with us but raises deep questions in this work, slinging hooks in the readers’ consciousness as she unmasks the brutality of the world today. A devout animal activist and environmentalist, Williams believes that the job of the avant-garde writer is to frame the misuse of the natural world, and the strongest vignettes are those that convey this message. So compact that they often leave us unnerved, these revelatory reflections of the world we live in are as entertaining as they are enlightening.
Words – Paula Clarke
