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A brilliant debut.
— Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Marriage Plot
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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
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These stories begin in this world, the one we all inhabit and recognize, and then they travel to another place that’s eerie, unsettling, and beautiful. You can't predict where the stories will go—or who, or what, will be the half-visible presence there. 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
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These stories begin in this world, the one we all inhabit and recognize, and then they travel to another place that’s eerie, unsettling, and beautiful. You can't predict where the stories will go—or who, or what, will be the half-visible presence there. 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
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Every so often a writer comes along who seems to have access to something not quite rational, some tone or feeling that lies under the surface of things. Zach Williams is such a writer. His beautiful, disquieting stories are profound in the true meaning of that word—they go deep. He's a major talent, and this is an exciting debut.
— Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears, Red Pill and Blue Ruin
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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
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Every so often a writer comes along who seems to have access to something not quite rational, some tone or feeling that lies under the surface of things. Zach Williams is such a writer. His beautiful, disquieting stories are profound in the true meaning of that word—they go deep. He's a major talent, and this is an exciting debut.
— Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears, Red Pill and Blue Ruin
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These stories are elegies for days yet to arrive, which Zach Williams can somehow see coming. His stories are strangely infused with emotions that as yet have no names, because they are only now, in Beautiful Days, finding representation on the page. The visionary weirdness of the stories feels hauntingly attuned to our time. Because I read them headlong, one after the other, it was some time after closing the book before I began to grasp what had happened—I was still in them. They are not really short stories at all, but worlds impossible to leave.
— Elizabeth Tallent, author of Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism
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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
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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
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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
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These stories are elegies for days yet to arrive, which Zach Williams can somehow see coming. His stories are strangely infused with emotions that as yet have no names, because they are only now, in Beautiful Days, finding representation on the page. The visionary weirdness of the stories feels hauntingly attuned to our time. Because I read them headlong, one after the other, it was some time after closing the book before I began to grasp what had happened—I was still in them. They are not really short stories at all, but worlds impossible to leave.
— Elizabeth Tallent, author of Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism
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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
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One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2024
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One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of Publisher's Weekly's 10 Promising Fiction Debuts of Spring 2024
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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
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“[A] sense of bizarro claustrophobia informs the stories in Williams’s debut collection.
— Publishers Weekly, *Most Anticipated Debut Fiction*
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[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
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The visionary weirdness of these stories feels hauntingly attuned to our time.
— Elizabeth Tallent, author of Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism
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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
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“[A] sense of bizarro claustrophobia informs the stories in Williams’s debut collection.
— Publishers Weekly, *Most Anticipated Debut Fiction*
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[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
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[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
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"Provocative.
— Booklist