The Quick and The Dead
Joy Williams
Vintage Books
<p>Misanthropic Alice is a budding eco-terrorist; Corvus has dedicated herself to mourning; Annabel is desperate to pursue an ordinary American life of indulgences. Misfit and motherless, they share an American desert summer of darkly illuminating signs and portents. In locales as mirrored strange as a nursing home where the living dead are preserved, to a wildlife museum where the dead are presented as living, the girls attend to their future. A remarkable attendant cast of characters, including a stroke survivor whose soulmate is a vivisected monkey, an aging big-game hunter who finds spiritual renewal in his infatuation with an eight-year-old–the formidable Emily Bliss Pickles–and a widower whose wife continues to harangue him, populate this gloriously funny and wonderfully serious novel where the dead are forever infusing the living, and all creatures strive to participate in eternity.</p><p>"<i>Williams is in top form here (State of Grace, 1990, etc.), her outrage balanced by a wise, compassionate, bemused overview. Think Denis Johnson’s world, minus the drugs—ultimately, though, Williams echoes only herself in a risky, frisky, profound book.</i>"&nbsp; -&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Kirkus Reviews</b></p><p><b>Joy Williams</b>&nbsp;<i>is the author of four novels. Her first,&nbsp;State of Grace&nbsp;(1973), was nominated for a National Book Award for Fiction, and The Quick and the Dead&nbsp;(2000) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her first collection of short stories was&nbsp;Taking Care, published in 1982. A second Escapes, followed in 1990. A 2001 essay collection,&nbsp;Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.&nbsp;Honoured Guest, a collection of short stories, was published in 2004.&nbsp;</i></p>