Ninety-Nine Stories of God by Joy Williams audiobook

Ninety-Nine Stories of God

By Joy Williams
Read by Elisabeth Rodgers

Blackstone Publishing 9781941040355

Unabridged

Format : Library CD (In Stock)
  • 3 Formats: CD
  • 3 Formats: Library CD
  • 3 Formats: MP3 CD

  • ISBN: 9781504760331

  • ISBN: 9781504760324

  • ISBN: 9781504760348

Runtime: 1.93 Hours
Category: Fiction/Literary
Audience: Adult
Language: English
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Summary

Summary

Longlisted for the 2017 Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize

A 2016 PEN/Malamud Award Winner

A 2016 New York Times Book Review Notable Book

A Huffington Post Best Book of 2016

A New York Times Editor’s Choice

A Seattle Times Best Book of 2016

A New York Times Pick of Books We're Reading This Summer

An Amazon Best Book of the Month for July 2016

A 2016 Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year, Top 10 Selection

A BookRiot Pick for New Books of July 2016 

A Huffington Post Best Book of 2016

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Joy Williams has a one-of-a-kind gift for capturing both the absurdity and the darkness of everyday life. In Ninety-Nine Stories of God, she takes on one of mankind’s most confounding preoccupations: the Supreme Being.

This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It’s the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass—a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams’ characters, however, are like the rest of us: anonymous strivers and bumblers who brush up against God in the least expected places or go searching for him when he’s standing right there. The Lord shows up at a hot-dog-eating contest, a demolition derby, a formal gala, and a drugstore, where he’s in line to get a shingles vaccination.

At turns comic and yearning, lyric and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God serves as a pure distillation of one of our great artists.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews

“Wry and playful, except for when densely allusive and willfully obtuse, Ninety-Nine Stories of God is a treasure trove of bafflements and tiny masterpieces.” —New York Times Book Review
“These ninety-nine religious-flavored vignettes may not tell you why we are here or where we are going, but they do possess the power to entrance.” —Minnesota Star Tribune, Best Fiction of the Year
“Joy Williams’ quietly splendid fifth collection…has a surprising heft…The prose inside is airily laid out…funny, sage, and as meditative as a book of prayers.” —Boston Globe
“Joy Williams’ stories are a humanist manifesto, a celebration of our most mysterious values, desires and prejudices.” —Huffington Post
“Sly and wonderful…[Williams is] after some big truths in a few words, stories so short that some of them could fit on Twitter, except they’re too smart and not mean enough. ” —Seattle Times
“These stories are 100 percent Williams: funny, unsettling, and mysterious, to be puzzled over and enjoyed across multiple readings.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Williams’ prose is simple and brutal, thoughtful and haunting. A spare but startling book. ” —Booklist (starred review)
“Admirers of Williams—and anyone who treasures a story well told should be one—will find much to like here.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Perfect little gems; it’s rare when such short works can truly satisfy.” —Library Journal
“Each narrative transforms the concept of god into a metaphor or coping mechanism meant to ease the anxieties of being human. At times, Ninety-nine Stories of God reads like a fabulist scripture, each vignette and flash-length vision bringing her audience closer to understanding the purpose behind the divine and our need to embrace or reject it.” —Electric Literature

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Author

Author Bio: Joy Williams

Author Bio: Joy Williams

Joy Williams is the author of five novels—including The Quick and the Dead, a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize—and four collections of stories, as well as Ill Nature, a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Among her many honors are the Rea Award for the Short Story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008.

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Details

Details

Available Formats : CD, Library CD, MP3 CD
Category: Fiction/Literary
Runtime: 1.93
Audience: Adult
Language: English

1-800-621-0182

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