Safe Return Doubtful

American Literature – Short Stories – Published October 2025

Here are 12 very different stories which border on being aplocalyptic and yet humanity scrambles on; natural and constructed landscapes are gradually collapsing amongst their unknowing inhabitants.

The beginning story sets the tone well. Flour concerns a journey with no destination, of someone wealthy enough not to work, although the details are unspecific enough to defy reference. ‘The driver and I got a late start.’ it begins. Its immediately compelling, both from curiosity’s sake, and the element of the surreal that surrounds it.

It continues with Stuff, one my favourites, though there are few duds here. Henry, a well-meaning but talentless journalist, visits the doctor where he is told he has lung cancer. Although there’s been a mistake, the doctor having read from the wrong file belonging to an older patient, ‘You have lung cancer as well, a bit more advanced, actually,’ the doctor tells him. ‘Sorry about the mix-up.’ Henry changes the topic, trying to ignore the doctor’s words, asking if he will waive the parking fee before admitting ‘if the recently condemned weren’t required to pay their fair share, the lot would bring in no money at all.’ In the world Williams is describing, the parking lot takes precedence.
There is great variety though, some of the stories are more grounded, for example, My First Car and The Beach House.

In My First Car, the protagonist, a motel clerk named Cinnabar, works at an infant daycare for a week while the owner takes a sabbatical to pray for the children’s health. A key detail concerns Cinnabar driving her Oldsmobile, she refuses to use the indictators, saying, ‘Why should I show Death where I’m going.’

George and Susan and Nettle though, read more like ghost stories, though by no means the traditional type. In Nettle, the protagonist Willie, a grown man, is still caught in the emotional landscape of his childhood, navigating his world with his late father. In George and Susan the ghost of George, who never set foot in the USA in life, is on a pilgrimage to Susan Sontag’s childhood home in Arizona.

This is my first experience of reading Williams, and I enjoyed it greatly – I will be back for more. I prefer her more surreal stories, of which there are plenty, they have just that touch of dark humour to them that really appeals to my rather strange tastes..

My GoodReads score 5 / 5