A review by emmkayt
Honored Guest by Joy Williams

3.0

I can tell these short stories are well-written - their opaque literariness is a dead giveaway. I found the first pair especially interesting. In the titular story, a dying single mother and her teenage daughter are unable to communicate meaningfully, while in "Congress," which was beautifully bizarre, a woman's most meaningful relationship ends up being with a lamp she becomes emotionally attached to. But as I moved through the collection, I was increasingly alienated. So much "wait, what?", such unrelenting isolation, lack of meaning, lack of connection. I didn't really 'like' most of it, but those first two were well worth it. Maybe 2.5 stars? But giving stars seems as meaningless and uncommunicative as, you know, the entire world if we lived in a Joy Williams story. Hey, wait...