Concerning the Future of Souls balances the extraordinary and the humble, the bizarre and the beatific, as Azrael – transporter of souls and the most troubled and thoughtful of the angels – confronts the holy impossibility of his task, his uneasy relationship with Death, and his friendship with the Devil.
Practically a book of poetry ... Williams distills a lot of learning — about philosophy, aesthetics, metaphysics and morality — into her vignettes ... Running almost silently below the loneliness and the silky comedy in these stories is the sense, down on earth, of acidifying oceans, species loss and space junk crashing Muskily down from the cosmos.
Her novels...feel like one long short story at times. I know that doesn’t quite make sense. Maybe I simply mean they are also works of genius ... Williams approaches the spiritual content of her work through the rough-and-ready, banal material of contemporary America ... Should be read...not as prophecy, or proof of the divine, but as a seed of possibility, something that can grow wide, rooted, and alive. One must imagine the future—and see a forest.
Impressive ... Concerning the Future of Souls resists any attempt to reduce it to a single thread, and though its slim size makes it possible to consume in a single sitting, that would be a mistake. This is a book to linger over, with more questions than answers, and it is sure to be lauded for its intellectual breadth and masterful control.
