The Visiting Privilege

"The Visiting Privilege is the rare collection that doesn’t have a single piece, even a single paragraph, that’s less than brilliant, and it proves that Joy Williams is quite possibly America’s best living writer of short stories. She is our poet laureate of loss and mourning, but she’s so much more than that — she seems to have a supernatural ability to show what makes us function as people, at our best and at our worst. And most important, she celebrates our vulnerabilities, the moments that make us so imperfect and broken and essentially human."

"'The Visiting Privilege,' by Joy Williams. 'The dead just forget you,' a character reasons, and boy, that is a sobering, ego-crushing thing to tell someone."