Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege ***

Frankly, I'm not sure how to rate The Visiting Privilege, new and collected stories from Joy Williams.

How would you describe the tone of this passage?

They took them to the cemeteries, from which the children would return with rubbings which Constance found depressing—

     This beautiful bud to us was given
     To unfold here but bloom in heaven

or worse!

     Here lies Aimira Rawson
     Daughter Wife Mother
     She has done what she could

The children affixed the rubbings to the side of the refrigerator with magnets in the shape of broccoli.

Kinda dark but sharply funny. Whatever it is, I love it. I'm also impressed with Williams' prose, interesting characters, and ability to direct the reader's attention to multiple tableaux at the same time. (For example, "White" takes place at a party, but the main character Joan also notes the goings-on of the dog next door.) All arguments for a high rating.

But there wasn't a single story whose narrative arc made sense to me. Literary short stories are often more like sketches than self-contained accounts, but that's not what is happening here. Williams' stories go in a more unpredictable direction than that. For example, "Congress" starts as a relationship drama, shifts gears when due to a hunting accident "a large portion of [the man's] brain lost its rosy hue and turned gray as a rodent's coat," becomes a travelogue through the Southwest (with a hilarious party scene), and ends with the woman taking over a famous taxidermy museum. I enjoyed almost all of it, but the conclusion didn't bring it home.

If it's about the journey and not the destination, The Visiting Privilege gets four or five stars.