If you or I wrote these stories and submitted them to a publisher, they'd be rejected. Bizarre and nonsensical, even the brevity of the pieces doesn't save them from tediousness. They may provide your eyes with some exercise . . .in eyeball-rolling at the author's pretentious "cleverness." Obviously not my cup of tea.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tin House Books for this reader's copy. In exchange, I am providing an honest review. (Because NetGalley requires at least one star to accompany a finished and reviewed book, a star has been attached to this review but in other places, I give this book zero stars.)

I don't know what I just read. I only finished the book because it was so short. I can't give it any stars for a rating, I can't give it an abandoned status as I finished it, so I gave it a new status for myself and my review. It has earned the "WTF" status. Several times, perhaps during the entire book, I said out loud and quietly, "WTF" while reading.

The publisher describes the book, in part, this way: This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God.

Yeah. I didn't get that in, oh, 96 of the stories. Some of the chapters felt like they were taken straight out of Wikipedia. Some of the stories weren't stories at all, just a sentence or two. Some stories were baffling in how irrelevant they were. And some stories were drivel. Just pure drivel. None of the stories allowed me to explore anything, much less anything about God. They just frustrated me with how ridiculous they were and the waste of time I feel they were.

One review I read stated that had it been an average person, not yet published, who submitted any part of this book for consideration it would be rejected straight away. I have no idea how Joy Williams broke into the publishing world but had this been her first-ever submission I feel strongly she would have been rejected. But since she's established it was accepted and published. I'm actually baffled by that. Surely not all drafts published authors submit get accepted. *shrug*

I really don't understand how this book passed by an editor, etc, and became published. It's pure drivel.

Catching up on really old titles. I'm very sorry I didn't get a chance to read it before it expired. Thanks for approving my request.

This was a strange title for me to request, but I understand now why I did. These stories are every day people talking about their experiences with something greater than themselves.