Taking Care

author
Joy Williams

the shpiel
Oh, Joy Williams, I love you.  I suppose I should just put that out there now.  While I do love her novels (particularly State of
Grace), I am going to push her short fiction, which, dare I say, I think I love more.  Taking Care, Escapes, and Honored Guest are all replete with the kind of quirky defamiliarization that Williams is known for.  Case in point: "A cat seems to be murdering a baby bird in a nest outside the girl's window. The girl is listening to the child sleep. The child lies in her varnished crib clutching a bear. The bear has no tongue. Where there should be a small piece of red felt there is nothing. Apparently, the child had eaten it by accident."  Williams finds whatever is at the emotional heart of her narrative and proceeds to ignore it for the duration of the story, focusing instead on the objects immediately surrounding the hurricane’s eye.  The result is a world with misplaced tensions that looks like the territory we’re familiar with, only far more heightened and tightly wound, “The child had frustrated her again.  The child would not go to sleep.  She was upstairs wandering around making ‘cotton candy’ in her bone-china  bunny mug.  ‘Cotton candy’ was Kleenex sogged in water.”

Williams is smart about life, and astute about love in ways that make you question not only your own perceptions, but indeed, you own experiences.   

what really matters
How god-damn-funny she is.

some things this author has written
Novels
State of Grace (1973)
The Changeling (1978)
Breaking and Entering (1988)
The Quick and the Dead (2000)

Story collections
Taking Care (1982)
Escapes (1990)
Honored Guest (2004)

Nonfiction
Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals (essays) (2001)
The Florida Keys: A History & Guide, illustrated by Robert Carawan (Tenth Edition) (2003)