I've always liked Williams' short stories much more than her novels, and in this collection of 12 - each first published in the last decade or so, I think - the gap in style has closed somewhat. By which I mean these stories - later period I suppose, compared to those previously collected in The Visiting Privilege and the distinctively themed flash/revelation fictions in Ninety-Nine Stories of God and Concerning the Future of Souls - tend to be particularly uncompromising in their direct focus on the anagogical (a word I learned from Williams' own, famous list of what a short story should be) and also on the state of environmental collapse our world is in, and in their obliqueness in every other respect ... story, character, conventional theme, progression of events. These are not stories offering comfort, or even recognisable feeling. There are dogs everywhere.
The ones I like most do tend to be those that offer at least a recognisable emotional hook, if not always a through-line. "Nettle", dwelling on a childhood loss as re-enacted through characteristically Williamsian slipping through time for repeated encounters with a deceased father ("Once, when he was older, he and his mother had gone to Florida."). "Chaunt", a brutal end-of-days dwelling. "My First Car", an enjoyably existential goof that ends with a gesture more familiar among more conventional short story-writers, the turn towards what next, but here an unpredictable surprise in both structure and tone: " 'No, I want to give it to you. It's a gift. I'll give you some eggs, too,' Marilyn said happily." "Chicken Hill", a troublingly precocious child (another Williams speciality) who may or may not actually exist, visiting an older woman whose memories and beliefs may or may not be wholly accurate.
