Beautiful Days: Stories
Beautiful Days: Stories
Beautiful Days: Stories
Member Benefits
30% Off All Books - Savings that support storytellers, not stock prices.
Fight Book Bans - Every membership sends a book to LGBTQ+ youth in affected states.
Member Book Price
$28.00
$19.60
Couldn't load pickup availability
Description
Description
From New Yorker and Paris Review contributor and Wallace Stegner Fellow Zach Williams comes a staggering debut story collection that confronts parenthood, mortality, and life's broken promises. Parents awaken in a home in the woods, again and again, to find themselves aging as their infant remains unchanged. An employee is menaced by a conspiracy-minded security guard and accused of sending a sinister viral email. An aging tour guide leads a troublesome group to the site of a UFO, witnessing the slow social deterioration as the rules of decorum go out the window. In each of Williams' ten stories, time is as fallible as the characters, and reality is witnessed through the gauzy folds of a dream--or a nightmare. Bucolic scenes devolve into harrowing exercises in abandonment; the quotidian nature of office life raises serious questions of existential fortitude. Williams is keenly aware of the insidiousness lurking in the shadows of the everyday, ably spiking it with humor. He depicts the divided self of the parent, the distances necessary to protect our children, and the fallout of our deepest relationships. Williams sees the perversity in the mundane and dares readers to recognize the impact--and beauty--of time's relentless movement. With exquisite prose and a lacerating wit, Beautiful Days holds a mirror to the many absurdities of being human and refuses to let us look away.
About the Author
About the Author
ZACH WILLIAMS is a Jones Lecturer in Fiction at Stanford University, where he previously held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. His story "Trial Run" was one of three that won The Paris Review a 2023 ASME Award for Fiction. Originally from Wilmington, Delaware, he currently resides with his family in San Francisco.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2024 - One of Publisher's Weekly's 10 Promising Fiction Debuts of Spring 2024 "Beautiful Days is one of the year's best debuts. . .a glorious creepfest reminiscent of speculative collections by Carmen Maria Machado, Mariana Enríquez and other children of Lovecraft....Williams sees beyond newspaper headlines to a world cleaved apart by forces we've unleashed, blinkered by arrogance and greed. . .Beautiful Days is the spear tip of his potential. This writer's got talent to burn." --Hamilton Cain, The Washington Post
"At least once every year, a debut short-story collection comes along and gets under my skin. . . In 2024, that collection is Beautiful Days. . .a subtle and speculative barn-burner that fans of Stephen King and Ling Ma will devour." --Esquire "Zach Williams is a brilliant, singular, deep, and deeply entertaining writer. You will continue to think about and feel these stories long after you have finished reading them. They will change you." --Jonathan Safran Foer, New York Times bestseller and author of Here I Am "Beautiful Days is a remarkable collection. These stories are full of irony and absurdity, but are never sleight, glib or waggish. Zach Williams paints us into every story with quick, deft strokes and then unfolds, with a scarily confident hand, the rest of the canvas, full of surprises and truths and stuff we never imagined." --Percival Everett, Booker Prize finalist and author of James "A brilliant debut." --Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Marriage Plot "Remarkable. . . Revelatory. . . Williams's tales deserve favorable comparison to the stories of Wells Tower and George Saunders." --Publishers Weekly *starred review* "There's a quiet intensity to the way Zach Williams crafts short fiction, like a coiled spring ready to snap, or a snake about to strike. . .His prose is precise, witty and full of vivid imagery, with a gift for marrying tension and humanity that calls to mind John Cheever or Shirley Jackson. That makes Beautiful Days a powerful, unsettling, genuinely thrilling collection, one that singles Williams out as a must-read voice in fiction." --BookPage *starred review* "Beautiful Days brings a reader though strange and grounded lands on just the other side of reality. You will come through changed, shaken, thoughtful, and totally amazed." --Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book
"[Zach Williams's] beautiful, disquieting stories are profound in the true meaning of that word--they go deep. He's a major talent...an exciting debut." --Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears, Red Pill and Blue Ruin "Beautiful Days contains elegant mysteries, and the book stays in the mind long after you've read it." --Charles Baxter, author of The Sun Collective
"The visionary weirdness of these stories feels hauntingly attuned to our time." --Elizabeth Tallent, author of Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism
"Wide-eyed on the world and its often mystical ways, there's a sparkle of magic and mystery in every elegant sentence of these wondrously curious, unsettling, and absolutely original stories. I devoured them with pure delight--and with awe for this writer's singular imagination and talent." --Chang-rae Lee, author of My Year Abroad
"[A] bracing debut. . . Much like George Saunders, Williams develops setups rooted in equal parts absurdity and peril. . . determined to metaphorically work through the fear and feelings of disassociation from modern life. . . Lyrical, well-crafted, offbeat yarns."
--Kirkus Reviews "Provocative." --Booklist
"At least once every year, a debut short-story collection comes along and gets under my skin. . . In 2024, that collection is Beautiful Days. . .a subtle and speculative barn-burner that fans of Stephen King and Ling Ma will devour." --Esquire "Zach Williams is a brilliant, singular, deep, and deeply entertaining writer. You will continue to think about and feel these stories long after you have finished reading them. They will change you." --Jonathan Safran Foer, New York Times bestseller and author of Here I Am "Beautiful Days is a remarkable collection. These stories are full of irony and absurdity, but are never sleight, glib or waggish. Zach Williams paints us into every story with quick, deft strokes and then unfolds, with a scarily confident hand, the rest of the canvas, full of surprises and truths and stuff we never imagined." --Percival Everett, Booker Prize finalist and author of James "A brilliant debut." --Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Marriage Plot "Remarkable. . . Revelatory. . . Williams's tales deserve favorable comparison to the stories of Wells Tower and George Saunders." --Publishers Weekly *starred review* "There's a quiet intensity to the way Zach Williams crafts short fiction, like a coiled spring ready to snap, or a snake about to strike. . .His prose is precise, witty and full of vivid imagery, with a gift for marrying tension and humanity that calls to mind John Cheever or Shirley Jackson. That makes Beautiful Days a powerful, unsettling, genuinely thrilling collection, one that singles Williams out as a must-read voice in fiction." --BookPage *starred review* "Beautiful Days brings a reader though strange and grounded lands on just the other side of reality. You will come through changed, shaken, thoughtful, and totally amazed." --Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book
"[Zach Williams's] beautiful, disquieting stories are profound in the true meaning of that word--they go deep. He's a major talent...an exciting debut." --Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears, Red Pill and Blue Ruin "Beautiful Days contains elegant mysteries, and the book stays in the mind long after you've read it." --Charles Baxter, author of The Sun Collective
"The visionary weirdness of these stories feels hauntingly attuned to our time." --Elizabeth Tallent, author of Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism
"Wide-eyed on the world and its often mystical ways, there's a sparkle of magic and mystery in every elegant sentence of these wondrously curious, unsettling, and absolutely original stories. I devoured them with pure delight--and with awe for this writer's singular imagination and talent." --Chang-rae Lee, author of My Year Abroad
"[A] bracing debut. . . Much like George Saunders, Williams develops setups rooted in equal parts absurdity and peril. . . determined to metaphorically work through the fear and feelings of disassociation from modern life. . . Lyrical, well-crafted, offbeat yarns."
--Kirkus Reviews "Provocative." --Booklist
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Doubleday Books
Pub date:
2024-06-11
Length:
240 pages
The Allstora Membership
Membership Perks:
- Save 30% on all online store purchases
- Exclusive access to author's content
- You pay less, but authors still earn double
Membership Terms:
First Month:
$0.00
Monthly price:
$5.00
- To access membership discount simply log in and add to cart, discount applied automatically.
- One month free trial, cancel anytime. Membership renews on the 15th of each month.