16 Awesome Reads to Add To Your Fall Library
Check out this season's must-read titles including from Joy Williams's arresting new story collection, Bonnie Jo Campbell's unflinching portraits of strong women, and lyrical meditations on loneliness from Colum McCann.
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The Visiting Privilege
By Joy Williams
512 pages;
Knopf
Like an art retrospective, the publication of a volume of selected
stories late in an author's career is an opportunity to assess a
lifetime's work. Sometimes the styles and subject matter are so varied
as to make for an ungainly grouping; in other cases, a harmony of voice
and vision emerges. The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories, which
includes 33 works culled from previous collections and 13 appearing in
book form for the first time, is powerfully united by Joy Williams's
profound gift for illuminating with compassion and mordant humor,
characters on the jagged edge of grief and spiritual ruin. In "The
Mother Cell," a group of mothers bound by violence—they all have children who are murderers—attempt
to consider their legacy. "Taking Care" depicts a preacher who must
care for the grandchild his daughter abandoned as his wife's health
falters. In "The Country," a newly single father traverses desolate
terrain to attend meetings of Come and See!. a gathering of misfits that
includes a woman who believes her life's purpose is to accompany the
dying through their final moments. But in the end, these gestures toward
fellowship offer little solace. The search for mercy is at odds with a
landscape that is increasingly merciless—and yet hope remains. While the world views of Williams' characters are uncompromisingly truthful—"We've settled nothing," says one of the women in "The Mother Cell"—the
stories are rich with tenderness. There is the theater usher who tries
to save an unspooling alcoholic, and the unfathomable love of a man for
his wife: "He shares his heart with her, all that there is." The Visiting Privilege is
also laced with Williams's trademark cutting wit, which provides a
small release, as of steam escaping through a pressure valve, while also
pushing the stories' dark absurdity. Williams is a wonderfully tricky
writer to categorize—her work does not appear to belong to a single school or style—but
there is a moment in "Honored Guest" when the young narrator, Helen,
speaks not only to the crux of her own situation, but to the collection
as a whole: "To live was like being an honored guest. The thought was
outside her, large and calm. Then you were no longer an honored guest.
The thought turned away from her and faded."
— Laura Van Den Berg
Published 10/16/2015