Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good

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A Granta Best Young British Novelist'A thrilling love for the stuff of language Magical' JON McGREGORPoignant and playful DAILY MAIL A writer with few real rivals IRISH TIMES'A visionary writer' JAN CARSON

The stunning new collection of stories from the award-winning author of The Liars Dictionary and Attrib. and Other Stories.

Granta Best Young British novelist and acclaimed author of Attrib. and other stories, Eley Williams returns with a thrilling collection of short stories exploring the nature of relationships both intimate and transient from the easy gamesmanship of contagious yawns to the horror of a smile fixed for just a second too long.

A courtroom sketch artist delights in committing portraits of their lover to paper but their need to capture likenesses forever is revealed to have darker, more complex intentions. A childs schoolyard crush on a saint marks a confrontation with the reality of a teenage body in flux. Elsewhere, an editor of canned laughter loses their confidence and seeks divine intervention, and an essayist annotates their thoughts on Keats by way of internet-gleaned sex tips.

Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good hums with fossicking language and ingenious experiments in form and considers notions of playfulness, authenticity and care as it holds relationships to account: their sweet misunderstandings, soured reflections, queer wish fulfilments and shared, held breaths.

Undeniably a skilful book TELEGRAPH

Stories that work from the inside out glancing, intriguing GUARDIAN

'Erudite and audacious' KEIRAN GODDARD

Frequently brilliant and deeply pleasurable CAOILINN HUGHES

I dont know anyone else who can write like this What a joy!' BEN PESTER

A joy for the head and the heart' RUBY COWLING

Reviews

Stories that work from the inside out In these glancing, intriguing stories, Williams is careful never to offer neat endings Guardian

Stories of deft surprise and smuggled revelations, glorious snapshots of lives lived with bafflement and wonder. Magical Jon McGregor, author of Lean Fall Stand

Undeniably a skilful book Telegraph

Poignant and playful Daily Mail

Delightfully comic stories executed with such precision and care Williams is a writer with few real rivals for stylistic acuity and invention Irish Times

I dont know anyone else who can write like this language does something special for Eley Williams. What a joy! Ben Pester, author of Am I in the Right Place

A visionary writer Each story is a multi-layered, kaleidoscopic exploration of a moment. Williams writes with both buoyancy and tremendous weight Jan Carson, author of Quickly, While They Still Have Horses

Frequently brilliant and deeply pleasurable Williams writing is funny, surprising, calming and inimitable Caoilinn Hughes, author of The Alternatives

Like Kate Atkinsons recent Normal Rules Dont Apply, what you have here is a strong, funny writer having some fun Bookmunch

'Vital, vivid and oddly companionable stories that make wonders from the ordinary in a heady but precise wordplay' David Hayden, author of Darker with the Lights On

Swimming in Williams oceanic imagination is a joy for the head and the heart Ruby Cowling, author of This Paradise

Theres a frightening type of joy in these stories; erudite and audacious Keiran Goddard, author of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning

Confirms her status as champion of the quixotic, the profound, the pulling-the-rug-from-under-your-feet unexpected. A writer to treasure Catherine Taylor, author of The Stirrings

Author Bio

Eley Williams' collection of fiction Attrib. and Other Stories (2017) was awarded the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Her novel The Liar's Dictionary won a 2021 Betty Trask Award, was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and listed as a Guardian Book of the Year. In 2023, she was selected as one of Grantas Best of Young British Novelists. Her writing is published in journals and anthologies including Modern Queer Poets, The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story edited by Philip Hensher, and Liberating the Canon edited by Isabel Waidner, with stories and serialised fiction also commissioned by Radio 4. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.