Harrow

Review She practices ... camouflage, except that instead of adapting to its environment, Williams's imagination, by remaining true to itself, reveals new colorations in the ecology around her. -- A.O. Scott ― The New York Times Book ReviewAs our world disintegrates, it will take what we think of as reality with it. Addressing this in fiction will be the job, partly, of a certain kind of modern mystic. Williams - great virtuoso of the unreal - is one of them. -- Sam Byers ― GuardianA magnificent and moving novel [that excavates] the middle distance between silence and experience . . . Harrow is a piece of writing in the vein of Samuel Beckett or Franz Kafka, its humor weaponized by rage. -- David L. Ulin ― Los Angeles TimesHarrow's dark humour, nihilism and absurdist bent bear the author's idiosyncratic stamp ... [there are] glistening nuggets of humour and wordplay amid the doom. ― The Irish TimesHarrow belongs at the front of the pack of recent climate fiction . . . A crabby, craggy, comfortless, arid, erudite, obtuse, perfect novel, a singular entry in a singular body of work by an artist of uncompromised originality and vision . . . To read this novel is to know and to be known (Galatians 4:9) by a profound and comfortless alterity, to encounter the cosmic otherness at the very core of the self. -- Justin Taylor ― BookforumDeath-haunted and perfectly indescribable fiction . . . To read Williams is to look into the abyss . . . [She] remains our great prophet of nothingness. -- Anthony Domestico ― AtlanticThe ridiculous, pigheaded, bemused, endlessly distracted and continuously self-sabotaging state of the future is the subject of this wonderfully goading satire . . . A blackly comic portrait of futility . . . This is sarcasm of a high, artistic order, reminiscent of no one quite so much as William Gaddis. -- Sam Sacks ― Wall Street JournalElegantly deranged . . . A hypnotizing novel, funny in places and chilling in others, filled with wacky and tragic characters, that unspools the absurdity in just one of our many very possible bad futures. -- Emily Temple ― Literary HubWilliams's tone achiev[es] a new, perfectly hostile register . . . [Her] vision of an annihilated earth seems to have flown from the brain of Francisco Goya . . . As the novel continues, it plumbs ever-deeper zones of dystopian weirdness . . . She practices a kind of hallucinogenic realism, which takes at face value the psychological flights of characters deranged by loss . . . Williams has long written to the side of conventional English, pursuing a form that feels more commensurate with actual experience-with the terror, comedy, and mystery of moving through the world. -- New Yorker ― Katy WaldmanWho better than Williams to capture pure-hearted but absurd efforts to retrieve paradise lost? ― The MillionsClimate collapse is well underway and Joy Williams's Harrow deserves the Pulitzer Prize ― BookforumThe return of an American original ... Odd, witty and original. ― Guardian 2022 in books highlightsBrilliant and inspiring. Anyone new to her has a treat in store ― The TimesAmong the strangest, most exciting authors at work today ― Daily MailPraise for Joy Williams: 'One of the great writers of her generation' ― The New York TimesTo read Joy Williams is to be arrested in a state of relentless awe and wonderment ... why we aren't worshipping Joy Williams in public squares is beyond me ― Vanity FairShe belongs in the company of Céline and Flannery O'Connor -- James SalterWilliams is a flawless writer ― NPRDeep, dazzling, disconcerting -- Adam FouldsJoy Williams is simply a wonder -- Raymond CarverElectric and dangerously human -- Philip HensherCracked, morbidly hilarious ... a splintered vision of environmental collapse that seems somehow both gleefully nihilistic and yearningly spiritual ― Wall Street Journal Top Ten Books of 2021Beautiful ... It's all pleasure, if pleasure of a bleak and violent sort. It's also often pretty funny, in a deadpan way -- Chri