Beautiful Days
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Summary
A BOOK OF THE YEAR choice in the New Yorker, Washington Post and Electric Lit
Deeply uncanny and hauntingly resonant – strange stories about modern America, for fans of George Saunders, Mariana Enriquez and Shirley Jackson
'These stories will change you' Jonathan Safran Foer
A young family is trapped in a time loop in an idyllic holiday cabin. A middle-aged man becomes convinced that his disappointing son is an impostor. Two brothers take a midnight ride in a golf cart and run into trouble. The elderly tour guide at an alien contact site loses control of his guests. Meanwhile, all around them, America is dissolving, fragmenting, distorting beyond recognition.
The antiheroes of Beautiful Days are chronic underachievers: men lost in their own lives and plagued by loneliness, self-doubt, suppressed rage. When the worst happens, they take to the road – crossing the wilderness in stolen cars, riding trains to the end of the line, or cruising along ruined monorails as the skyline burns.
Zach Williams' stories are haunted by the ghosts of America – its lost illusions, its dark aspirations, its boundless, disquieting potential. They leak through the fabric of reality and out into the void beyond. And they reach, ever-hopeful, toward a moment of connection that might pull a body back from the brink.
Reviews
Uncanny, subtle and spectacular. Once every year, a debut collection comes along and gets under my skin... In 2024, that collection is Beautiful Days. Fans of Stephen King and Ling Ma will devour [these stories] about the horrors of encountering something completely unknowable in the course of everyday life, whether it’s the mind-warping experience of parenthood or the echo-chamber effect of the internet and social media
Esquire