interestingly, almost gleefully off-kilter stories with a lot of fun ideas, although some of the endings felt unfinished. tysm for the arc, 4 stars.

Published by Doubleday on June 11, 2024

The stories collected in Beautiful Days are unexpected. They earn my recommendation simply because they are surprising, free from the typical domestic drama that seems to be the subject matter of most American short fiction. Some of the stories are a bit surreal, but most are not so far removed from reality that they lose their appeal.

In one of my favorite stories — “Lucca Castle,” the longest in the volume — a man who is grieving the loss of his wife and isn’t coping well with his daughter embarks on an experiment. The experiment essentially involves living in the moment and being open to anything, even if “anything” means sleeping all day and wallowing in grief. A younger woman at a diner takes an unlikely interest in him and, following a bizarre coincidence that might be interpreted as fate, they hook up. She brings him to a guru-like figure who might be a cult leader, a man who condemns the kind of wealth-acquisition work that is the protagonist’s career. By walking away from the cult, the experiment brings him closer to his daughter, closer to understanding how he needs to move ahead with his life.

“Ghost Image” is another of my favorites. It is narrated by a man who, while working at a meaningless temp job, pitied his boss for dreaming of a post-retirement career as a monorail conductor at Disney World. Years later, as a father whose unfaithful wife has died, having realized none of his own half-formed dreams, the man talks to his former boss as if he is a spirit, seeing him in a stranger in a bar, seeing him in the teenage son from whom he has become estranged. After abandoning his life, he journeys to a future where Disney World is shuttered and surrounded by the remnants of natural disasters, and imagines seeing his old boss wearing a conductor’s cap. The story is a reminder that when we are young, we don’t “know how long life takes, or what it does to you as you live it.” This is an odd and discomfiting story. Those qualities might contribute to my admiration of it.

The narrator of “Trial Run” works for a small analytics firm. Someone has been sending antisemitic emails to the business’ employees. The emails target the manager. Since the emails began immediately after a diversity workshop, there is reason to believe that the sender is an employee. The business has hired a security guard, but he seems to be a believer in conspiracy theories, leading the narrator to wonder whether the guard sent the emails. Another suspect is a paranoid co-worker who overshares, a man who might be “hiding below the surface of routine, awaiting, with all the patience of a fanatic, some dark eventuality in which to reveal himself.” The story is an amusing take on office politics and daily fears.

In the most surreal story, Jacob and Ronna rented a vacation cottage but they can’t recall how long they’ve been there or even where the cottage is located. They argue about ways to investigate their circumstances and fail to follow through on their plans. Their behavior grows progressively more bizarre. Their toddler never seems to be injured when he falls, never seems to be hungry when his parents leave for days to explore the wilderness. Like a snapping turtle, he never seems to grow older. In his crib, Ronna believes him to be safe from scary things. His parents might be the scariest thing in his life, which might or might not be the point of “Wood Sorrel House.”

“Red Light” tells the story of a kinky hookup with a woman whose boyfriend (his description is a bit freakish) likes to watch her have sex while hiding in the closet. In “Neighbors,” an elderly woman’s son asks her neighbor to check on his mother. The mother is dead but someone is standing in her bedroom, a resident of “an unbroken field, containing everything.” The protagonist in “Mousetraps” has a strange conversation with a hardware store owner who questions the value of humane mousetraps.

Three other stories, including one about a fellow who suddenly grows an extra toe, didn’t do much for me. On the whole, however, this is a diverse collection of enjoyable, offbeat stories.

RECOMMENDED

Beautiful days was a really interesting and engaging read. I appreciated the character exploration and would read more from Williams.

Propulsive and eerie and quite beautifully written. I read this in one sitting, which doesn't usually happen for me with short stories. Haunted by "Return to Crashaw" (and the transformation of language and story) and "Ghost Image." "Red Light," "Neighbors," and "Trial Run" also stand out. I'll be revisiting these, looking at how the unexpected/uncanny/surreal pierces the ordinary world.

When I first read '[Trial Run](https://www.theparisreview.org/fiction/7873/trial-run-zach-williams)', Zach Williams's modern political rollercoaster of a short story, we meet persons polarised:

> I dropped my bag, put my coat on the chair, sat and swiveled so neither Manny nor Shel was in my line of sight, and took out my laptop, running my fingers along the deformed place where the battery had swollen. A note from Lisa, our manager, still sat near the top of my inbox—“Stay warm, see you back at the office on Thursday.” But just above it was the one Manny had mentioned, from TruthFlex00-09@gmail.com: Lisa Horowitz is a CULTURAL MARXIST—¡WHITE GENOCIDE!

If that had been all there was to Williams's prose, I'd have left it on the floor; what kickstarts Williams into being is his style:

> Nora—Bea’s mother, my wife—had been dead a little more than one year. She had died suddenly and by chance, in what I suppose you’d call an accident, just walking to the train from work. The shock of dislocation that I experienced after it happened had been nearly physical, like passing into a new and different city—the streets roiling and unsteady, the buildings overhead a dark mess of stalagmites. Eventually the sensation receded, though I couldn’t forget it, and it kept coming back, each time a little stronger. I had to learn to blink it away. For months that’s what I did, but it came to feel hopeless. The sensation seemed to want to increase toward some extremity, a point of complete saturation. What I grew to suspect was that, sooner or later, I’d have to let it.

Now that's effective text, simple and American, in a sense Stephen King-ish, peppered with commas. When at its best, Williams's prose is taut and yet relaxed, striking a strange rhythm between what's expected (American life) and what is coloured in a way that drew me in, that called me to read more.

Where William S. Burroughs described both the everyday existence of people in spite of extreme circumstances both internal and external, Williams dives only into what happens inside of ourselves, by using the external as a ruse. The mundane feeling that his prose first evoked in me was lost after a while, a hypnotic effect that reeled my senses into thinking there was first not much behind simple arrangements of the externals.

> What happened to those years, between your birth and Maureen’s death? Sixteen of the fucking things. The art gallery folded. I found bookkeeping work with a small theater company and spent weekends getting high with my city friends. I said no more kids; Maureen knocked out a wall and redid the kitchen. My hair came in gray, I worried about my erections, the United States defaulted on its debt. But still I read hopefully about late bloomers. Did you know that Philip Glass drove a cab into his forties? When you were thirteen, I converted the attic to my studio and took up painting again. As I worked, I tried to be loose in my body, rolling my shoulders, waving the energy up my spine, like before. Around that time, I had a dream. It’s just past sunset and I’m back in Columbus at the insurance firm. The room is dark, filled with the hum of ghosting computers. Down by the dumpster I see a bonfire built from big sticks, crossed at the top, shooting sparks into the air. And standing beside it is Joe Daly. Wearing a suit of black feathers. Terrified, I sink to the floor, and there I become conscious of a tug between my legs. Hooked directly into my scrotum is an old 32-pin connector cable. It’s running to one of the computer towers. Running to Ghost Image. And then you woke me up. You said you’d missed the bus.

As many debutante authors are prone to do, there is the counting of things, there is the addition of too much at times, but it does not weigh down the book as a whole; Williams is too graceful and careful a writer to do something as stupid as quickly knock out a shit book, to look down on the reader, to cash in.

This is a collection of viscerally told pieces, reminiscent of an Alex Garland film without most philosophy. I can't say these stories are memorable, but that's beside the point of a good short-story collection, a bit like those by Kurt Vonnegut. I eagerly await Williams's next book.

I first encountered Zach Williams in the New Yorker, and grew excited when I saw he had a collection coming out. And BEAUTIFUL DAYS does not disappoint. These are mysterious stories that dip into the uncanny, often through the lens of domesticity / family / home-making. The opening story remains the best one, and one of the best stories I've read in recent years.

I look forward to reading whatever Williams does next. Thanks to the publisher for the e-galley!

I am so thankful to PRHAudio and Doubleday books for the #free audiobook and #gifted physical copy before this collection of short stories comes out on June 11, 2024.

I am such an avid fan of short story collections because each story brings a different perspective to the party. There’s something for everyone – eerie sexcapades, weird family drama, workplace conspiracy theories gone amuck, and a slew of nightmares that go on for days.

Williams does an excellent job of portraying the weird, uncanny, and terrifying nature of unsettling circumstances. I just couldn’t get enough.

This was a dark and ominous collection of short stories that made me feel off-kilter at the best of times. Unsettling in a very raw way, think Black Mirror meets Leave the World Behind. If you enjoy things that make you question reality and existence then you’ll probably like this debut.

I, however, am not the key demographic for this type of narrative. I didn’t enjoy the angst and discomfort I felt while reading and honestly felt stressed as I started each new story. I will say that the writing was really good and I can see Zach having a bright future in the literary world. I’ve been vacillating between 2 and 2.5 stars for a week. Still can’t decide how I really feel so I’ll just leave it at that.

Big thanks to Doubleday for the #gifted copy and digital arc via Netgalley.

𝙿𝚞𝚋 𝚍𝚊𝚢: 𝙹𝚞𝚗𝚎 𝟷𝟷

After reading these stories, I’ve decided that I was not a good target audience. There is no denying that they are well written but I failed to understand the author’s intent.

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the ARC to read and review.

Thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday for the ebook. This book of short stories is grounded in both the every day and the fantastical, mostly within the same story (A father gives his young son a bath an finds that somehow he now has an extra toe). The standouts are a family on vacation who can never leave, as they get older and their young child doesn’t. A man who goes to check on his elderly neighbor and finds an unexplained stranger in the house. It opens with a small office drama that feels inconvenient as much as it does sinister. This is such a nice start to this writer's career.

Beautiful Day is an unsettling collection of stories about ordinary people who experience bizarre and threatening happenings in their lives. It is not a stretch to call it metaphysical fiction, and it is intended for readers who are drawn to those kinds of stories. Think of the TV show Severance, the Academy Award-winning movie Everything Everywhere All at Once., or possibly David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas or George Saunders’ stories. If you are a fan of any of these, you are likely the perfect reader for this collection.

In Trial Run, the opening story, a man living alone after a contentious divorce finds himself in his nearly empty office on a snowy day. There are only two other men there: an unraveling co-worker and a tightly coiled security guard. Lately, some disturbing viral messages have been coming in, and suspicions are running high. As he cautiously listens to the ramblings, his sense of safety becomes increasingly violated. What is really going on here?

In another, Wood Sorrel House, one of the longer pieces, an ordinary couple is transfixed in some sort of pastoral reality. The couple has a little boy; even though the parents grow older, the toddler shows no signs of getting older.

In Neighbors, another ordinary couple who are struggling with the aftermath of infidelity moves to San Francisco in the hopes of “redrawing the map” of their marriage. Yet what awaits them is a strange occurrence in a neighbor's home. In another, a man connects with a woman who wants him to have sex with her while her husband watches from the closet. He imagines the husband as virulent. After he finishes the deed, he is shocked to discover the truth.

A number of authors whom I greatly respect hail this collection as brilliant, and if I were a critic, I would agree. It takes a great appreciation of the absurd and the perverse, and as I read on, I became increasingly certain that I was not the right reader for this particular collection. As a result, I feel uneasy providing a rating, which is required. I am tremendously grateful to Doubleday and NetGalley for the opportunity to be an early reader and recommend the book to those who are more comfortable with the genre.