The 12 stories in her hypnotic collection, The Pelican Child...are painterly and provocative, slipping beyond the frame of reality, as if Magritte or Dalí had propped their easels amid the Sonoran desert. We recognize her elliptical voice even as she delights in throwing us off balance ... She flavors her pieces with piercing observations, a pinch of irony, and her signature moxie. She’s still got it, still mulling the riddles we pose to each other, and to ourselves.
Knockout ... Clever ... There isn’t a trace of dust or faddishness in the entire collection. Williams, at 81 years old, has published her best book since the 2000 novel The Quick and the Dead. That book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
The singular, disconcerting uneasiness that is so characteristic of Joy Williams’ fiction, yet so hard to pin down, is once again dazzlingly on display in her latest collection ... Though now in her 80s, Williams’ imagination clearly hasn’t failed, so hopefully her remarkable stories will keep coming.
