Pelican Child

Lauded as the best story writer of our time, Joy Williams returns with a taut collection that responds to our modern dilemmas with her signature dry wit and deftness of touch. In sinister and shifting landscapes, we meet souls lost and found: from the twin heiresses of a dirty industrial fortune, who must commit a violent act in recompense for their family's deeds, to a newly grown man who still revolves in a dreamscape of his childhood boarding-school innocence, to the "pelican child", who lives with the bony, ill-tempered Baba Yaga in a little hut on chicken legs. For readers of Lorrie Moore, Mary Gaitskill and George Saunders, these haunted stories examine the instincts separating us from the beastly and the divine.

Review: Praise for Joy Williams * - *
I've been a fan of Joy Williams since I first read her -- Ali Smith
Williams is the kind of funny you can't explain ... a master of the craft -- Anne Enright * Guardian *
Williams is a writer for our times: both visionary and caustic, knowing yet also full of wonder -- Catherine Taylor * Financial Times *
Williams is one of the most pioneering fiction writers of our time -- Andrew Motion * New Statesman *
Joy Williams' off-kilter, surreal visions of our world are unforgettable -- Sophie Mackintosh