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    Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine
    Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine
    Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine
    Ebook85 pages1 hour

    Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine

    By Diane Williams

    2.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    One of Elle's "Must-Read Titles for Your Book Club." Chosen by The Millions and Flavorwire as one of the most-anticipated books of 2016.

    The very short stories of Diane Williams have been aptly called "folk tales that hammer like a nail gun," and these 40 new ones are sharper than ever. They are unsettling, yes, frequently revelatory, and more often than not downright funny.

    Not a single moment here is what you might expect. While there is immense pleasure to be found in Williams's spot-on observations about how we behave in our highest and lowest moments, the heart of the drama beats in the language of American short fiction's grand master, whose originality, precision, and power bring the familiar into startling and enchanted relief.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMcSweeney's
    Release dateJan 18, 2016
    ISBN9781940450858
    Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine

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    Reviews for Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine

    2.5/5

    24 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      If you don't appreciate the avant garde, you'll hate this book. Seriously, it will read like she picked some sentences from other books at random and put them together.

      Most of these stories are only 2-3 pages, which makes them great for a quick brain reset when you've been tunnel-visioned on a bigger project for too long, or when you need a break from something emotionally draining.
    • 5/5
      This collection of flash fictions is like conceptual art in language, using the grammar, idioms, stereotypes, etc. we all know, but in unlikely and at times surreal combinations. If you read it for sense, you'll be frustrated; if you read it for pleasure and what it shows about our field of references in language and culture, you may well enjoy it as much as I did.
    • 4/5
      It's very hard to get into but about halfway through, her strange and somewhat disjointed writing style clicked with me and I started to understand what each of the stories were trying to say. If anything, it's a great exercise in searching for meaning in a seemingly unreasonable place. Definitely reminiscent of the Gertrude Stein style of writing.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Wow, this book sucked.A great short story can create a lasting impression in just a handful of pages; it can create scenes and characters that haunt for years after reading. Williams' Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine didn't contain a single story in the dozens collected that I could remember immediately after finishing it.
    • 1/5
      No, no, no, no, no ...
    • 2/5
      I wanted to love this book as much as I love its cover art. Unfortunately, things just didn't work out between us. The flash in the pan fictions didn't offer anything that pulled me in and the repetitive vagueness ended up being grating rather than enticing.

      I've flip flopped between a one and two star rating. All in all it isn't a book I see myself recommending but there was one inclusion that was more enjoyable than the rest for me; I felt William's wit shine through a bit in "The Romantic Life."

    • 1/5
      With Lydia Davis being one of the authors providing blurbs on the back cover, I really expected to enjoy this collection of short - or flash - fiction ranging from a paragraph to several pages. I am also unfamiliar with Diane Williams previous work, so this was my introduction to her writing. Unfortunately, what I within was a bunch of disjointed pieces that felt like daily notebook jottings polished into a failed poetry/prose hybrid with very little being conveyed beyond a inventive (and even then, not so much) use of language. There isn't nearly enough poetic tone or imagery within the prose, and the pieces rarely - with a few minor exceptions - manage to evoke any real emotion or thought. There is very little discovery, just a lot of muddled observations with a slight surreal tilt. It's one of those collections that makes you wonder, if this wasn't by an already established author/literary figure, does it even get published? An interesting - and some may even say courageous - attempt, but ultimately a swing and a miss.

    Book preview

    Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine - Diane Williams

    BEAUTY, LOVE, AND VANITY ITSELF

    As usual I’d hung myself with snappy necklaces, but otherwise had given my appearance no further thought, even though I anticipated the love of a dark person who will be my source of prosperity and emotional pleasure.

    Mr. Morton arrived about 7 p.m. and I said, I owe you an explanation.

    Excellent, he replied. But when my little explanation was completed, he refused the meal I offered, saying, You probably don’t like the way I drink my soda or how I eat my olives with my fingers.

    He exited at a good clip and nothing further developed from that affiliation.

    The real thing did come along. Bob—Tom spent several days in June with me and I keep up with books and magazines and go forward on the funny path pursuing my vocation.

    I also went outside to enjoy the fragrant odor in an Illinois town and kept to the thoroughfare that swerved near the fence where yellow roses on a tawny background are always faded out at the end of the season.

    I never thought a big cloud hanging in the air would be crooked, but it was up there—gray and deranged.

    Happily, in the near distance, the fence was making the most of its colonial post caps.

    And isn’t looking into the near distance sometimes so quaint?—as if I am re-embarking on a large number of relations or recurrent jealousies.

    Poolside at the Marriott Courtyard, I was wearing what others may laugh at—the knee-length black swimsuit and the black canvas shoes—but I don’t have actual belly fat, that’s just my stomach muscles gone slack.

    I saw three women go into the pool and when they got to the rope, they kept on walking. One woman disappeared. The other two flapped their hands.

    They don’t know what the rope is, the lifeguard said. I mean everybody knows what a rope means.

    I said, Why didn’t you tell them? and he said, I don’t speak Chinese.

    I said, They are drowning and the lifeguard said, You know, I think you’re right.

    Our eyes were on the surface of the water—the wobbling patterns of diagonals. It was a hash—nothing to look at—much like my situation—if you’re not going to do anything about it.

    A GRAY POTTERY HEAD

    How tenderly she had arranged the gray pottery head of a woman on her mantel—the subtly revealed head of an archaic woman. It exhibits some bumps and some splits.

    This was a gift from the Danish gentleman who had also given her a Georg Jensen necklace in the original box.

    She had been lucky in love as she understood it.

    And that night—some progress to report. Something exciting afoot. She has a quarter hour more to live.

    Even if she only gets to the lower roadway, she’ll have to manage somehow.

    Her boiled woolen cloak was wrapped around her tilting body and she was driving her car as if it were being blown away by the wind.

    She had gone down this particular road to go home for years. This time she also arrived close by the familiar place, dying.

    A tulip tree, tucked into a right angle formed by two planes, was brought into her view.

    The police officer who inspected her dead body saw one area of damage and the pretty mother-of-pearl, gold and enamel Jensen ornament that was around her neck.

    She has been associated with sex and with childbirth. No less interesting, she was a traveler on this unsophisticated country road.

    Her facial features are remarkably symmetrical, expressing vigor and vulnerability.

    CINCH

    My back started killing me and Tamara asked what else did I want and why? Oddly, she was suddenly unenthusiastic about me and she revealed resentment, of all things, and possibilities for her revenge.

    But how busy I was!—building the twelve-by-sixteen rec room at the rear of the house.

    I made bedplates and cut boards. And this was the day that Tamara baked her standard sponge cake.

    When I reached for a taste of the cake, she took the plate away.

    So I slapped her and drilled holes for anchor bolts, used a shim to level bedplates and my half-inch nuts to secure the bedplates.

    Have I seen that before? I asked her, for by then Tamara smoked a cigarette near the site and she was waving an arm on which slid—up and down—a bracelet of lumpy blue glass.

    A beautiful beam of light—perhaps it was aqua—was produced by the sun poking through the

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