Joy Williams has long been regarded as a master storyteller in the short fiction format. In The Visiting Privilege, we get about four dozen short stories spanning the length of her remarkable career, including thirteen that are new with this volume. Overall, it is a compelling collection that explores the complexities of human nature and personal relationships with equal parts humor, insight, and raw emotion. Williams delves into a wide variety of topics, frequently blurring the lines between the mundane and the surreal while considering the plight of ordinary people as they struggle with both everyday challenges as well as more bizarre and unsettling situations. These are largely tales of broken, downtrodden, or lonely people who are facing demons that are often of their own design. Alcohol consumption and death play prominent roles in the entire book and most of the stories include a dog, although seldom as a main character. Throughout, the author's prose is elegant but spare, usually capturing the essence of a moment with just a few highly evocative words and phrases.

While the stories themselves are brief—most of them are around 8-12 pages in length—they are not necessarily easy reading, given the difficult subject matter they cover. Still, each is well worth the effort, if only for their poignant observations and dark wit. The author has an effective narrative style that allows her to consistently create characters who may not be likeable, but nevertheless elicit a strong reaction from the reader—sometimes empathy, but more often discomfort. The Visiting Privilege does not really contain a weak story (an amazing feat in itself), but there were definitely a few that stood out: "The Farm", “Honored Guest”, “The Visiting Privilege (title story)”, “Hammer”, “Cats and Dogs”, and “The Mother Cell” would rank high on the list of the ones that affected me the most. Despite its intensity, this was a very gratifying book to consume. I only wish that I had done my consuming in smaller sips rather than the large gulps that I took! ( )

Realistically I may never finish this book, but I'm going to give it five stars because every story in here makes me want to be more thoughtful, more observant, smarter and better, so I can be more like Joy Williams. Also every story has a dog, it's fantastic. Joy Williams is so cool it kills me. ( )

There are a lot of good stories in this collection. The new content comprises about 100 pages, while the old stories take up 380. There appear to be 7 stories missing from the collections Taking Care, Escapes, and Honored Guest. The best stories are included, and unless one is a completionist, this volume should give one a well-rounded and plenty thorough dose of Joy Williams.

To me it had a "gogolizing" effect. While reading Gogol one begins to see everything through a strange, tinted lens. Nabokov described this as being "gogolized." The same thing occurs in the case of this author. I suppose any writer whose prose properly casts a spell over the reader begins to taint their perception of reality.

Be that as it may, the qualification for a good story in my mind is to create a willingness to revisit it. And these examples certainly qualify. ( )

To read a Joy Williams story is to devote yourself to a study in contrasts, to be challenged, confronted, unsettled.

Surreal yet grounded, bleak yet funny, straightforward yet abtruse. Many, if not all, require immediate second readings, long mid-story pauses, as well as long hiatuses in between stories. I suspect that rereading her will be a pleasure that matures with age. ( )

In this remarkable collection, Joy Williams breaks all the rules: abrupt time shifts, inconsistent points of view, unfinished vignettes, you name it. The stories are nearly all intimate familial scenes that are simultaneously busy and cacophonous: characters talking at cross purposes, little fits of imperfectly explained laughter, hopeless oddballs, insufferable children, parents awkwardly dying. Frequently set in Maine and Florida, the characters are adrift, loosed from one home and not yet found a place in another, abandoned by loved ones, carried along by outside forces and unable to find a foothold to root themselves. Somehow, across dozens of tales, Williams manages to draw sympathetic and distinct characters who are -- even when insufferable -- oddly appealing. ( )