Concerning the Future of Souls: Ninety-Nine Stories of Azrael

by Joy Williams

Joy Williams offers ninety-nine illuminations on mortality as she brings her powers of observation to Azrael, the Angel of Death and transporter of souls. Balancing the extraordinary and the humble, the bizarre and the beatific, the book presents Azrael as a thoughtful and troubled protagonist as he confronts the holy impossibility of his task, his uneasy relationship with Death and his friendship with the Devil. In this follow-up to Williams' 99 Stories of God, a collection of connected beings - ranging from ordinary people to great artists such as Kafka, Nietzche, Bach and Rilke to dogs, birds, horses and butterflies - experience the varying fate of the soul, transient yet everlasting. Profound, sorrowful, witty and ecstatic, Concerning the Future of Souls will leave readers awestruck in their confrontation of life in the face of death.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Audiobook, Philosophy, Poetry, Literary Fiction, Female Authors

176 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 2, 2024

About the author

Williams is the author of four novels. Her first, State of Grace (1973), was nominated for a National Book Award for Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Quick and the Dead (2000), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her first collection of short stories was Taking Care, published in 1982. A second collection, Escapes, followed in 1990. A 2001 essay collection, Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Honored Guest, a collection of short stories, was published in 2004. A 30th anniversary reprint of The Changeling was issued in 2008 with an introduction by the American novelist Rick Moody.

Her stories and essays are frequently anthologized, and she has received many awards and honors, including the Harold and Mildred Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Rea Award for the Short Story.

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first Joy Williams book for reasons I don't fully understand. I have heard of her through friends, critics, and, most importantly, other writers who swear that she's the "it" in contemporary fiction. It took a free giveaway from Goodreads to get a copy of this book, and I think it was just a matter of fate delivering it to me.

I knew nothing of Azrael, so I had to look this "angel" up and see what responsibility this angel has/had. Is it a subjective choice they make where the soul goes, or is it pre-planned in some fashion? A collection of mini-narrations and mediations, this book can be read in a day, and it's a powerful presence because all of us, and what we have in common, is that we are going to die. Whether it's the big sleep or some consciousness that one goes through, it's a subject that connects with us humans. The second lead character is the Devil, and how can that not be possibly entertaining?

One thing is for sure: I will check out all the other Joy Williams books, both the short story collections and novels. When this book comes out on July 2, 2024, I suggest you go to your favorite bookstore or online shop and get and read it.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as consistently stunning as "99 Stories About God," but lots of gems scattered throughout these provocative meditations on mortality and the afterlife, many of them hilarious. Worthwhile for anyone wise to the fact that Joy Williams is one of the greatest living writers.

[Ellis Eden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Concerning the Future of Souls by Joy Williams is a collection of micro stories layered between a narrative of Azrael and Lucifer—angelic colleagues in the Great Beyond. Through the stories we learn that Azrael is a mover of souls responsible for “transmigration from one body to another,” and Lucifer is the hand of “the Unmoved Mover.”

The descriptions of the two angels are some of my favorite moments in the novel. Instead of a goat-footed doer of evil, Lucifer is portrayed as vain, clever, and worldly: “The Devil had an infinite supply of sneakers and never wore the same pair twice as far as Azrael could tell.”

In contrast, Azrael is innocent and earnest—the rookie who still believes his job is worth doing. The reader can’t help but identify with the befuddled Azrael, who is teased by Lucifer for never being truly part of Heaven or Hell, but cursed to exist between.

For a comprehensive theme beyond the tragicomic duo, Williams gives us a framework in the beginning of the novel: “Kitsch,” his mother explained, “isn’t in itself beautiful but instead elicits its emotion from the beauty it depicts.” Each of the 99 stories and essays could be understood as kitsch, or complicated ideas reduced to simplistic forms.

The 99 do not begin with titles. Instead, epilogic titles are revealed at the end of each passage, keys to unlocking the abstraction. Unlike some reviewers, I don’t see this book as a philosophy primer, but as a gateway of inquiry. In the spirit of kitsch, the reader can take the lessons at face value or hunt for their deeper, nuanced origins. In short, the novel is a puzzle whose boundary and shape is limited only by the reader.

Although Azrael isn't the angel of death, we are subject to the visceral violence of dying. Two stories in particular made me physically ill while reading, and I would caution sensitive readers to tread carefully. Trigger warnings for this book might include violence toward animals and infant death.

Despite the horrors, I found myself drawn through the darkness by Azrael’s light. He is responsible for the souls of our world who have begun to mysteriously disappear. Like the Devil, I love and fret over Azrael: “He couldn’t recall liking anything so much. Such affection could cause nothing but worry of course. The whole apparatus that Azrael embodied, enabled actually, was rickety, not built to last. Deferred maintenance.”

Who I think would enjoy this book: Williams’s prose is minimal, conversational, and clean, so I think most people would find it easy to read. However, those willing to learn beyond the book would enjoy it the most, otherwise it would remain an opaque abstraction. In academic terms, I could imagine it as a required course reading or perhaps the brilliant catalyst to an interdisciplinary thesis.

Pros: Fast read, playful, layered, clever metafiction
Cons: Scattered, spare to the edge of ambivalence, at times misanthropic and dark

Similar Works: It reminded me of Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman—it reveals non-fiction concepts through the action of fiction, while maneuvering astronomically large ideas to fit in the palm of your hand.

Concerning the Future of Souls by Joy Williams (Tin House, $22.95 hardcover & ebook, 176 p., 9781959030591, July 2, 2024)

Buy it here: https://tinhouse.com/book/concerning-...

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This can be viewed as a companion piece to Williams’s earlier Ninety-Nine Stories of God but works equally well as a standalone. Just as with the earlier volume, this slender book is a collection of 99 small observations, meditations, as Azrael, the angel tasked with collecting souls of all living things, ponders his role in the age of extinction. Incisive, brilliant and soulful (if you’ll pardon the pun).

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the final story of 2016’s Ninety-nine Stories of God by Joy Williams, a psychic is trying to reach the Lord, who is present there in her home but invisible and silent. She employs a handy cliché proven to shuck difficult spirits from their astral shells. She says to the Lord, “You always wanted to be a poet.” No luck. Shooting straighter, she asks: “What’s going to happen after I’m dead?”

Eight years after that collection’s ultimate question, Concerning the Future of Souls (Tin House, 2024) arrives with the answer. Meet Azrael: Shepherd of Spirits, Angel of Death; another ambiguous transcendent entity, of whom we now have ninety-nine additional vignettes. Praise be.

Williams saturates Azrael with insecurity, plays with his image, and drops him into dialogue with the devil, whom she also ornaments with various neuroses. Their tête-à-têtes reveal our troubled mortal thoughts to be similarly pervasive in higher realms, especially when it comes to ecological breakdown, the most ubiquitous form of death throughout the Future.

This is Williams in flash mode. Stories here may take the form of a dialogue, a single word, or even an image. Some readers may be frustrated by the amount of negative space here, but these supposed voids provide the real estate for whole metropolises of meaning to be built up. Whether you care to investigate Henri Bergson’s Cone of Memory or google dugong is your business, but if you’ve ever gotten a dopamine hit from having hundreds of tabs open simultaneously you’ll surely enjoy a little extra digging. Treat the less forthcoming stories as hyperlinks and allow your associative imagination to take over. Wikipedia is your friend.

Taken together, Ninety-nine Stories of God and Concerning the Future of Souls form a nourishing work of fictional scripture. Separately, they are enjoyable books, beautifully designed. Each individual story is a portal to an unexpected place, a question leading to more questions, as any inquiry into the divine can’t help but be. As they say, the gurney is your destination. The stairway, heaven itself. Whether you’re a spiritual seeker, or like me, simply an awe-prone atheist, Williams’ writing will leave you in a state of grace.

Read the full review at Blatherbrugs

[Brian O'Connell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joy Williams adds another grimly eschatological chapter to her withering survey of the terrible consequences the dialectic of enlightenment has wrought on the world. Both more recognizably “narrative” and more abstract than Ninety-Nine Stories of God, the book orbits around two mystical figures whose succinct, witty, and heartbreaking exchanges demonstrate Williams’ extraordinary facility for concise characterization and bittersweet humor. But the rest of the book operates in a much more skeletal and haunted register, pushing Williams’ dark concerns to a new register of aesthetic minimalism without sacrificing any of the horror or anger. There is simply nobody writing on this level. It is a rare breed of prose that attains the stature not only of great literature, but of an elegy for our world.

This is the first time I’ve won an advance review copy through a Goodreads giveaway and it happens to be a book by my favorite writer. I feel blessed.

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

More musings on humans in the universe, in elegantly condensed form that has more in common with those list novels from Carol Maso and David Markson than flash fiction. Slight, but often resonant beyond its shape. The central recurring character here is Azrael the angel of death, a bit of a simpleton, but we also get fragments of the lives of theologians, koans, and non-sequiturs, all in a carefully orchestrate dance. And so soon after Williams' first novel in 20 years. She is a national treasure and I hope we may still get much more to come.

[Jaynie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soooooo I don’t normally read books like this. In fact, I’ve never read a collection of short stories like this, as I normally read novels. I definitely prefer a good novel better BUT this book was honestly really interesting. It taught me a lot of things and allowed me to see different perspectives. There are some very beautiful lines here. There’s lots of food for thought and cool stories, so I’m honestly pretty glad I read it.

[Phyllis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second book I have read by Joy Williams, and I did not fully understand this one anymore than I did the first (which was Harrow). The consensus opinion seems to be that Joy Williams is a brilliant writer, but I think she is perhaps too brilliant for me.

[Cleo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that she works better in a longer form but still has moments

[michal k-c · Rating 5 out of 5]

The souls are malnourished, they’re not eating enough, and when they do eat it’s nothing good, they want out but where can they go?

[Matt Harms]

Weirder and more impenetrable than 99 Stories of God. But Williams' sentences are beautiful.

[Barbara Waloven · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t say that I understood all of the 99 illuminations (short stories, tiny masterpieces, bizarre quips, or whatever they’re called). Each had a certain remanence though. A lingering feeling or taste that are both sad and ecstatically appealing, sometimes both. Angels, the devil, God, death, life, existing, not existing, animals, insects, (wo)man, mountains, oceans, an empty square, a 2 word question and a 1 word sentence…this covers it all. Makes you think, makes you wonder, and even has some ah-ha thoughts. If you like philosophy, nature, and culture studies…this is a book for you.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

As incisive & brilliant & inspired as you’d expect.

[rachy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last time I read a book from Joy Williams was some years ago, right at the start I would say of when I was starting to really feel like a roughly well read person. While I didn’t dislike it, I didn’t think so much of it at the time and I don’t really remember it much now. Thinking back on it, I was never quite sure if this was from my lack or from its, so I thought that reading her new release would be good way to decide which, and maybe lead me to revisit ’99 Stories of God’ if necessary. Instead, I had almost the same experience again, which while maybe a little disappointing, at least leads me to a more concrete idea of how I feel about Williams and her work.

I definitely think some of this was simply lost on me because it’s just a bit too highbrow, and I simply am not that highbrow. There was plenty I could appreciate from my basic biblical notions, and plenty that was digestible without any of this, but plenty more I’m sure that passed right over my empty little head. I guess luckily for me ignorance truly is bliss and so I still enjoyed enough here, however shallow that enjoyment may have been in actual reality. Also Williams’ prose is undeniable, beautiful enough regardless of subject. I suppose in this way, a lot of this hit me the same way some poetry does: enjoyable for its lyrical quality and the feelings it evokes, but not something I always fully understand or could strictly explain.

So I don’t know, I enjoyed my time with this, but lightly. Maybe I’m not smart or eccentric enough person to really be able to take all of Joy Williams’ lofty ideas at more than face value. Ultimately it’s all just a little too pretentious for my tastes, something for someone a little more educated maybe. I’m still interested to read more of Williams’ work, considering I’ve only read her flash fiction, I’m curious to see if anything would be different reading an actual novel from her. Part of me just can’t really imagine what that would look like, but I’d like to find out.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I so enjoyed Williams’ writing style that I’d like to seek out her other works. My first of favorite bits:

“Jesus and Azrael were not well acquainted. They they traveled in different circles. Jesus was surprisingly unfamiliar with death other than his own.” p5 ch 3

I’m already looking forward to reading this again. It’s a quick read, and I tried to take it slow in order to work on digesting the 99 vignettes on their own and in conjunction with the theme of the book. But I think future rereads will benefit me in this department.

[Amolhavoc · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this both reassuring and profoundly unsettling. My favourite parts were the descriptions of Azrael's eyes, and the vignettes of his "difficult" friendship with the Devil. I hadn't read any Joy Williams before but she is remarkable. It is a small quiet joy to discover a book like this.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Williams’ previous collection did not quite hit for me. And this is being sold as a follow up. I was worried.

But

This book is near perfect. Complicated and beautiful and easy and detailed. Williams covers it all.

Probably my favorite book of 2024 released in 2024.

[Shawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like this is a perfect kind of book in between books where I can kick up my feet, sip some boxed pinot greege and munch on some cool ranch doritos while waiting for the night to start. But the book felt very light when it was going for ephemeral and grasping straws when trying to feel modern. Maybe her older more acclaimed works will turn my head more.

[Evan Geller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, I didn't understand it. Some interesting moments and quotable passages, but, sorry, I didn't get it. Read it all the way through. Reread some parts. Still didn't get it.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been fascinated by Joy Williams' mind for a while now. Her catalog of work focuses on heady subjects from climate change to spirituality in a way that I think is uniquely unencumbered. I was really pleased to hear about the publication of her new work, Concerning the Future of Souls, especially given its nod to our current era of mass extinction. 

Williams' book is filled with short meditations or perhaps, more aptly put, concerns. Throughout these concerns is a loose narrative following the angel Azrael, who is tasked with transporting souls (both animal and human) to the afterlife. Azrael is a figure drawn from religion physically composed of four thousand wings, and the same number of eyes and tongues as as there are living beings on earth. 

I struggled a bit with this collection, as I found many of the stories a bit too sparse or abstract for my personal taste. Some stories were altogether over my head. However, I am so happy I picked it up because the stories that did resonate with me were both heartbreaking and masterful. 

My favorite story (number 70) discusses the desalination of the ocean in humanity's hunt for fresh water. Azrael is, in turn, tasked with transporting numerous sea creatures to the afterlife. During this process, many of his eyes (uncharacteristically) begin to close. He speculates that he has been weeping. Azrael reflects that these creatures, unlike the rest of humanity, will not need to fear any further judgement in the afterlife. This is the haunting type of work in which I think Williams excels. 

Concerning the Future of Souls comes out on July 2, 2024. A huge thank you to Tin House for providing me with an advanced reader copy. 

[Cristiano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar like 99 stories of god, this book collects 99 miniatures talking about, animals, souls, death and so so much more by the fabulous Joy Williams.

I had my head spinning by the language and the amount of information contained in one single miniature. I think, if I had more background knowledge (for example on Azrael, which I started researching half way through the book) I would have loved it more!

That being said, I marked many miniatures for myself to go back and reread and reflect upon.
Joy has her way with words and it totally immersed me at some point.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced reading copy.

[Katia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t remember what led me to place this book on hold at the library a month ago. I barely recognized the cover when it was made available for me to borrow, and so I started it yesterday expecting not to finish it. I spent the first third of the book confused — each chapter was a micro story that went seemingly nowhere. Then I realized what was going on: this is a REALLY short story collection, with the frame story being about Azrael, the innocent angel of death who’s friends with the Devil. In this context, every story about seemingly everything under the sun — philosophers, musicians, animals, the environment, the banalities of everyday existence — is meant to be understood within the context of death’s inevitability. This book is like a mosaic or a poetry collection, and every chapter is meant to provoke thought, existential dread, and/or ironic laughter. Some were more successful for me than others.

Short story collections are difficult for me because as soon as I get invested in the characters and their lives, I am expected to let them go. This book barely gave me time to get invested in anything except for the Devil and Azrael, and it’s a testament to the author that I feel satisfied with their arc given the short length of this book.

It’s fun to read something that feels original and genre-breaking. I’m now curious to try Joy Williams’ 99 Stories About God. However, I wouldn’t say I loved this book, and I’m not sure I’ll remember it long after today. But I’m glad I read it anyway.

[Ryan Berger · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems I read this in the dumbest way possible: rationed out over 99 days, giving myself a little taste of microfiction to go with my 5am breakfast of a Cliff bar and a Celsius.

That, I'm discovering, was not a good call. In fact, the opposite is probably what I should have done-- getting the whole thing down in one day. It's easy enough. The whole thing is built out of 99 blips and burps of conversation, exposition, diagrams, and more. Taken in totality as one long experiment, a lot of the rhyming of stories would have been more obvious. As it stands, I often began the day scratching my head and wondering if the emperor has no clothes.

I'll say this-- Williams gets the benefit of the doubt as one of the most cerebral and esoteric writers we've got working today, and she's chosen to do something enormously brave and creative with this book and its spiritual causing Ninety-Nine Stories of God. Williams writes with such confidence with her archaic splatters that even if I can't make heads or tails of the output, the *effect* stays with me and hints at a deeper intelligence.

This, coupled with my poor reading of the book, is all I need to review to conclude that Williams is definitely onto something I just can't pick up. This is a mosaic narrative built out of tiny snippets of things I have so little familiarity with and, when read so disjointedly, I wasn't able to make easy connections.

I listened to her previous experiment in about two sittings, and I felt that I ultimately could have done the same here. But having read some more reviews and flipped through the book upon completion, I think it's clear that there was a much more intentional approach to the stories here, and the sparseness of some of the more archaic stories requires you to lean on the others more to glean the meaning.

Still, it's an extremely difficult book. I once heard a defender of poetry lament that too many people think poetry is a riddle, and people would best be served thinking less about what a poem is about and more about what a poem *does*. That's all well and good, but this collection of vaguely interconnected prose poems do tend to feel like unsolvable riddles more often than not. Less stand alone in their understated profundity as they did in Stories of God.

It is more than fair to say that Concerning the Future of Souls is a more ambitious project, and so panning it for being less straightforward to my own sensibilities would be foolish. It is already calling for me to re-read it, and as it's such a short book I imagine I will indulge that impulse soon.

I'm already at the end of this review and I've barely touched on Azrael and his eternal gig-work. I'm fascinated by Williams's overall needle she's trying to thread here, this idea of the transit of souls and the custodianship of life and their moments of death. I suspect I'll pick up more on a reread but I can say at this point that even if I were to set aside what I couldn't understand, I was not as amused by some of the moments of tea and crumpets and chess and just overall complaining that our angel assistant has with the man downstairs. Williams's sense of humor is truly unique, but it doesn't always land for me.

[Dan Varrette · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first time reading anything by Joy Williams. This collection is like a cross between microfiction and poetry. It fuses serious philosophical concepts with irony and humour.

Interspersed throughout the text is a running series of conversations between the Devil and Azrael (the angel of death who separates souls from their bodies). I found these particularly enjoyable. I was sometimes reminded of Milton's Paradise Lost, where Satan is given the best lines. Here, the Devil acts as foil as he demonstrates the sharpest wit in his critiques of Azrael's actions and how they may or may not be proof of Azrael's moral agency and utility as an agent of God.

This is a quick read, but only because it's short. It's one of those spare but deep books.

[Márcio · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed a lot reading some stories of Azrael, transporter of souls and the most troubled and thoughtful of the angels, and his friendship with the Devil, who actually might not be all that bad, but a good old buddy, that is, a good soul. Lots of food for thought here, though William's style might not be to everyone's taste.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m astonished at the depths conjured in such few, blistery lines.

It’s everywhere anything is ever written about Joy Williams lately but I can’t help expressing how timeless it feels. The biblical elements are part of it.

So funny, so funny. And screamingly tragic. It is bleak. Is it hopeless? That’s my big question.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wild, as ever, and very funny. I do wish the book had been just conversations between Azrael and the Devil, perhaps, rather than all the seemingly unconnected other interludes, but Joy Williams is a perpetual thrill.

[Joseph Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read an excerpt from this in the Paris Review and was excited to get the full copy. It was lovely but real short, and only my first foray into Williams' work. Any suggestions? I was thinking Harrow.

[Dave Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

All Joy Williams's books require some time to sink in, some contemplation while reading and afterwards, and a willingness of the reader to work to put together the puzzle pieces. Always interesting, always a bit confounding. I found the conversations between the two angels to be the most interesting pieces but all of it is worthwhile.