FICTION
Beautiful Days
By Zach Williams
Doubleday Books
Published June 11, 2024
It is often said that truth is stranger than fiction. But Zach Williams, whose debut short story collection, Beautiful Days, is out this summer, makes the case for a new adage: strange fiction can help us tell the truth.
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FICTION
The Vanishing Point
By Paul Theroux
Mariner Books
Published January 28, 2025
The titular gem that begins Paul Theroux’s latest and perhaps last collection of stories, The Vanishing Point, is about a guy named Guy. Guy lives in rural Maine, where he works many jobs, including one as a handyman for a modern artist who paints colorful, crude shapes on large canvases. Guy is well-read (biographies, war histories), intensely patient (“Guy was never more silent than when someone talked a lot, and he nursed a hope that the person would become self-conscious and stop”), and admirably frugal (“he felt that in small ways like this, keeping things, fixing them, you could help change the world”). One cannot help but root for Guy as he bobs along the river of his life, often getting the short end of the stick but seemingly grateful to get a piece of it at all. The story’s question, and the source of its undeniable propulsion, is whether Guy’s goodness, modesty, and wisdom will lead him to an ending he deserves. What kind of shape will his life’s story take? For Theroux, the answer to this question requires vantage. It can only come at the end—the very end.
