There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories

Brad Watson, Joy Williams

Book cover for There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories
Book cover for There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories

There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories

There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories

Brad Watson, Joy Williams

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Description

Darkly comedic, lyrically mighty, and unabashedly vulnerable, There Is Happiness brings together Brad Watson's most celebrated pieces alongside new, unpublished works. Watson's characters--often boys and brothers, fathers and sons--are shaped by oddities of nature, while nature itself communicates loudly. In these pages, dogs most certainly have their day, a one-eyed woman swims the breaststroke, and Dolly Parton holds the key to a convict's salvation. Spouses grow apart while bitter landlords bang on the ceiling to quiet the creaking bedframe upstairs. Grotesque twins exercise in tandem, and two men drink to forget their dead wives (though "dead" is a relative term). Roller-coastering from the mournful to the hilarious (sometimes in the same paragraph) and steeped in both the Southern gothic tradition and a universal literature of the tragic, the beautiful, and the absurd, Watson's stories waltz masterfully with surprising, lovely, and strange melancholy, infused with wit and bound by authenticity.

Critical Reviews

Strange, wondrous, luminous--a lovely coda to a career (and a life) cut sadly short.--Kirkus Reviews starred review

This vibrant collection... showcases the author's wry humor and taste for the bizarre... It's sure to satisfy fans and newcomers alike.--Publishers Weekly starred review

If Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Conner had a one night stand--their spawn would be Brad Watson. His stories are as artful as they are unnerving. Watson renders the human experience with pathos and love. His work is singular, and essential in our understanding who we are and where we have come from. His early departure from this world leaves us aching for more.--A. M. Homes, author of The Unfolding

What sets Watson's work apart from his contemporaries is a singular strangeness. The world we know is always present, yet it is widened into something more wonderous, more heartfelt, and we find ourselves elevated into the sublime.--Ron Rash, author of The Caretaker

Brad Watson's remarkable talent truly shines in short fiction. It's hard to know which element is strongest--his bold inventiveness for story or the deep compassion he brings to his characters. As I read these wonderful stories, I often stopped to reread sentences, stricken by awe at his glittering prose. For those people already familiar with Brad's work, you are in for a wonderful treat. If you're new to his work, I envy you for the many books ahead of you to revel in.--Chris Offutt, author of Code of the Hills

A brilliant short story writer, Brad Watson could write breathless, comic scenes, or dreamy hallucinations, or glowering repartee; and he could surprise a reader with sudden breaks into the supernatural. He was as good at delivering riveting bursts of menace as he was at alleviating that menace with moments of transcendent beauty. Watson was always pursuing the mysteries of what it means to be human in the world; in There is Happiness, his singular, beautiful voice lives on.--Anthony Doerr, author of Cloud Cuckoo Land

Publishing Information

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Pub date: 2024-07-16
Length: 288 pages

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