Tales of love confound in weirdly enjoyable ways
For the past two-and-a-half decades, New York writer Diane Williams has been publishing short stories that are undeniably short — most clock in at under three pages — but that upend the whole idea of telling a story in the most weirdly enjoyable ways.
Imagine a narrow stairway with some steps set uncomfortably close, others far apart, and with a sudden turn at the top that leads directly into a closet or the open air. That’s a Diane Williams story. Though she gets categorized as an experimental writer, Williams doesn’t write the kind of cerebral, formally avant-garde fiction that dares readers to understand it.
The tales and vignettes packed into this very short volume are filled with moments of warmth and humour, even as they resist anything resembling a conventional narrative shape.
The characters are mostly men and women who are nearing or at retirement age, and are linked romantically, or wish they still were.
Many gain sudden insights into their lives, or are filled with a desire to change things for the better, only to have that desire drain out again when their story shifts unexpectedly.
Take this creepy deadpan moment from “Gulls,” a typically Williamsian slice of domestic life.
“The woman went to bed that night with nothing much accomplished visà-vis the mysteries of life. Her husband, next to her, squats carefully. Then he is on his knees above her.
“He keeps his chin down, giving proper shape to what he is trying to express — his romantic attitude toward life.”
If readers are confounded or wrongfooted by these shifts, it’s because the characters themselves are such a long way from figuring anything out.
Again, that makes it sound as if the stories are chilly mind-teasers to be admired more than enjoyed, which is not true at all.
It can take a while to catch on to the odd rhythms of Williams’ prose — her off-kilter descriptions, narrative tangents and deliberate use of clichés — but the effort is well worth it.