STATE OF GRACE

by Joy Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1973

Grace -- something whimsically God-given, not man-procured (as her rather oedipal minister papa endlessly reiterates) -- is something certainly lacking in both the style of this book and the life of its almost hilariously doomed narrator. Her mother and sister and fetal brother died in the dim but-ever-present past, and she is currently awaiting the birth of a baby as her husband dies in the hospital after an auto wreck for which she is perhaps vaguely responsible. Not to mention lesser catastrophes (the clawing of the sorority lesbian beauty queen, the murder of her only friend) that in themselves might have driven anyone (including the reader) insane. And it is this schizophrenic protective deadness of response that causes past and present, grandiose and mundane, to mingle in the character's mind with equal weight -- the drinking of a glass of milk meriting the same careful lack of regard as the unresponsive body of her husband -- a sick vision, with the clearsightedness of the disturbed that cuts through the hypocrisy of social civilities (we call it sanity) like an innocent but deadly knife. An extremely dense, rather precious, and outrageously depressing novel about a world in which nothing is new under this very cyclical sun.

Pub Date: April 1, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1973

Categories: FICTION