Joy Williams - Ninety-Nine Stories of God

"The letter, in time, though only rumored to be, caused her children, though grown, much worry."

That's the only sentence like it across the 99 stories and I'm sure it's deliberately placed at the end of the first story. Yet I couldn't say where that conviction comes from; that's how this entirely puzzling and brilliant collection works. They're remarkably compressed and at the same time wide open, often offering up suggestive connections between their component elements without going to far as to explain. For example:

21

If there is a crash at an American airport, the wreckage is removed immediately so as not to alarm the passengers on the flights that will come after.

This is not true at Russian airports.

While at some airports in the major cities, such as Moscow or Saint Petersburg, the wreckage might be taken away quite as if nothing had occurred, small runways in Siberia are littered with failed flights, their rusting hulks simply pushed to one side.

On a recent flight from Nome to Chukotka, the woman in the seat opposite us became quite agitated as we dropped rather peremptorily through the dark skies. She began loudly praying to God for deliverance. My companion remarked that her fervent request was useless, as God had long ago turned His great back on Russia. She might just as well have prayed to the luxurious black sable coat that enveloped her from chin to ankle. We had earlier been half-hypnotized by its beauty, what my companion had dared to describe as the glimmering, endless depths in the fur of so many little animals.

COAT 

This was my second read - and first since falling deep into Williams' universe with The Visiting Privilege - and this, whatever this is, it's more and more under my skin.

(first read)