The Pelican Child: Stories

by Joy Williams

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD • NAMED A NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST • A razor-sharp new collection of stories of visionary childhood misfits and struggling adult dreamers from this legendary writer of “perfectly indescribable fiction . . . To read Williams is to look into the abyss” (The Atlantic).

“Night was best, for, as everyone knows, but does not tell, the sobbing of the earth is most audible at night.” “Men are but unconscious machines and they perform their cruelties so effortlessly.” “Caring was a power she’d once possessed but had given up freely.” The sentences of Joy Williams are like no other—the coiled wit, the sense of a confused and ruined landscape, even the slight chortle of hope that lurks between the words—for the scrupulous effort of telling, in these eleven stories, has a ravishing beauty that belies their substance. We meet lost souls like the twin-sister heiresses of a dirty industrial fortune in “After the Haiku Period,” who must commit a violent act in recompense for their family's deeds; in “Nettle,” a newly grown man who still revolves in a dreamscape of his childhood boarding-school innocence; the ghost of George Gurdieff, on an obsessive visit to the Arizona birthplace of the shining Susan Sontag; the “pelican child” who lives with the bony, ill-tempered Baba Yaga in a little hut on chicken legs. 

All of these characters insist on exploring, often at their peril, an indifferent and caustic they struggle against our degradation of the climate, of each other, and of honest human experience (“I try to relate only to what is immediately verifiable,” says one narrator ruefully), possibly in vain. But each brief, haunted triumph of understanding is celebrated by Williams, a writer for our time and all time.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Fantasy, Audiobook, Adult, Contemporary

140 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 18, 2025

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

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

[unfurls red carpet of hyperbole]

America's Greatest Living Writer?

Perhaps, perhaps. Definitely in the running.

Not since Leonora Carrington have stories of old people and dogs been so riveting, so poignant, so cleverly and tenderly absurd. For decades, Joy Williams has kept her fingers clamped to the pulse of America, and it is clear that now, as she encircles its wasted, shriveled wrist once again, she feels the weak, erratic heart rate of a dying culture, one that has been slowly, inexorably impaling itself on the iron rod of capitalism for so many years. Capitalism—a system built by rich normies for the exclusive benefit of rich normies to the detriment of all other life forms.

He could have been good-looking, but some quality distorted his features, so he didn't look quite normal, actually. But who wanted to look the way people looked? Or behave the way they behaved? The further you could get from the generically human presentation and its habit of being the better.

Long live the Pelican Child!

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the waning days of our planet and country as we once knew them, equally waning humans make pointless and erratic motions which fail to redeem them or their situations. Many of these feel like parallel extensions of the dying world in Harrow, though from viewpoints too narrow to take in the scope of the thing, clinging to their minor routines. Exquisite, bitterly funny words afford the mundane and mythic an equal, fleeting grace. Williams been prolific lately, unlike her characters seemingly made sharper and more industrious in the face of ongoing ruination, and I eagerly await whatever may follow. She's more vital now than ever.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of Joy Williams' earlier books (Honored Guest, yes!), but am embarrassed to admit that her more recent work have not done it for me. But "Stuff" is a hilarious piece about a man visiting his mother in a care home to break the news that he is dying. (Yes, it *is* hilarious.) He reminisces:

He had been permitted to kiss his infant sister in her coffin. He had placed one of his soldiers beside her, couched in a pucker of silk. He had said that it was his favorite one, but it was not. It had never been his favorite one.

The stories here (written over quite a few years) are more vicious and funny than Williams' recent work. Can't argue with this from "Nettle":

He could have been good-looking, but some quality distorted his features, so he didn't look quite normal, actually. But who wanted to look the way people looked? Or behave the way they behaved?

Was Harrow like this? Or Concerning the Future of Souls? I don't remember.

Somehow I'm able to chuckle through the unhappy characters and dead-end towns. "My First Car":

I considered the possibility that they were going to leave me here, that this would be my life now, in this listing, stilling trailer, my journey interrupted. Easy as that, the exchange. It would be years before I could bewitch another to take my place. By then I would have forgotten that it was even possible.

Before that, they were bemoaning the death of the Great Barrier Reef.

The stories are not just funny, of course. Williams as always quietly empathizes with her characters and their unfortunate situations. But when you're stuck in a lot of shit, you have to find ways to laugh and soldier on.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird, wonderful stories. Entirely what you’d expect from Joy Williams.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joy cannot write anything bad.

[Ann (Inky Labyrinth) · Rating 2 out of 5]

It feels like not liking Joy Williams is punishable by death in the literary community. Well, so be it, I guess, because not a single story in this collection has stuck with me.

The last story is straight-up Baba Yaga fantasy and I would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't so jarring jumping from a slosh of ordinary stories into this one.

Maybe I just "don't get it", and that's fine with me.

Thank you Knopf for the early review copy.

[Deedi Brown (DeediReads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love weird short stories, and those that play with speculative elements or folklore all the more. But I’m not going to lie to you, this collection was not for me.

Joy Williams is a literary giant and so clearly, her work is technically impressive. But I fear she is too smart for me, and not in a way that inspired me to slow down and puzzle it out. Most of these stories all end before they’ve begun, to the point where it begins to feel like a gimmick, and in a way that left me feeling like I had no idea what they were about, much less what the collection overall was meant to do (all of the stories have been previously published elsewhere, so maybe nothing). And the problem was, I just didn’t care enough to try to figure it out.

Also? Sooooo many pretentious SAT words.

Anyway, it sounds like I hated this book, when really it just annoyed me, because it feels like one of those collections (and National Book Award nominations, ope) that is more about the author’s age and bibliography.

[Read By RodKelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

Joy Williams is one of the most distinctive writers I’ve ever read, and The Pelican Child is only further confirmation of her singular talent. This is my fourth book by Williams, and I found myself completely absorbed by the strangeness and beauty of these stories. Death is everywhere in this collection; every story reeks of it. And Williams’s style is uncompromising, ruthless, and beautifully surreal. Her sentences are meticulously crafted, emerging from the texture of their surroundings like a sudden epiphany. I love her ability to tap into the more esoteric and sacred side of life, and just as readily venture back into the dirt and grit of reality. I kept highlighting passages, moved as I was by the rhythm and cadence of her language, the musicality of her phrasing.

Williams writes from a place of unshakable moral clarity. She is merciless in her vision of humanity’s future, very clearly expressing her disgust at humanity’s cruelty and greed. The tone often feels heavy and pessimistic, with stories populated by characters who seem to read signs of doom that no one else can see. But they often have a bit of humor beneath the despair, a sense that, despite everything, life remains ridiculous enough to laugh at. Many deal with the loss of innocence, especially through the recurring image of dead or dying children (I was a little taken aback by how many dead children there are in this collection)—symbols, perhaps, of what’s irretrievably lost in all of us.

If some stories feel a bit overworked or on the nose, I didn’t mind. The collection as a whole feels remarkably cohesive. Everything is connected by a shared vision of death, grief, and the rituals surrounding both. Williams’s worldview is bleak and terrifying, but it is expressed with clarity and honesty, and is undeniably stellar. This is one of the most unique and haunting collections I’ve read in a long time.

[Hester · Rating 4 out of 5]

Titular story . Subversive fairy tale where a famous witch and her animals have subtlety and agency and the heroic male is revealed as less than ...

[Meakin Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joy Williams still has it—and I think she deserves a Nobel for it, too.

[Tom Anderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

You know that feeling where you just woke up from a dream and you're trying to piece together what happened and you can't quite get the events straight and you can't quite remember anyone's face or what exactly anyone said, but maybe they were like kind of mumbling about gnosticism or tarot cards or something else you vaguely remember reading about one time and then you think, maybe I'll tell someone about this dream....

...but of course you decide not to, because no one would be interested to hear about it.

I wish this author had listened to that feeling.

[Brian O'Connell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few of the early stories border on sketches, but the most substantial pieces here (“Nettle”, Chaunt”, “My First Car”, and “The Beach House” particularly) are among the finest she’s ever written, bar none. It is a book without hope or even consolation—she has never been more misanthropic and apocalyptic than in her recent work—but the lucidity of her language and the minor beauties it is able to salvage from the destruction are, as always, ineffably moving.

[Kim Lockhart · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Joy Williams. HARROW blew me away. I was fully invested in the writing, even more than the story. And now that I have had time to reflect, I think the novel best suits her strengths and style, over the short story format.

The intelligence of the author is obvious in these stories. However, the theme of disillusionment is portrayed perhaps too well. I'm unsure of the author's intent: to hold up a mirror to the decline of civilization and reveal an undercurrent of despair? Perhaps. And if so, mission accomplished. However, the bleakness overshadows the heart of the characters.

This is not quite the reading experience I anticipated. A near-miss for me, but I will still read anything and everything by this author.

[Baz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked what the critic Sam Sacks said about Williams when reviewing this collection: “Williams’s stories seem to have passed beyond the dramatic arcs and emotional payoffs customary to short fiction. They are beyond pretending that the world makes sense. They are even beyond caring about the familiar concerns of the living—yet they are about life, anyhow, as it persists in this beyondness.”

I thought that was such a good way to put it. He also called her stories “peculiar and tantalizingly ambiguous,” which is a great description of the quality of their abstraction. I put Williams in a small school that also includes Diane Williams, Kathryn Scanlan, Christine Schutt, Lydia Davis and Fleur Jaeggy—a school of tantalizingly ambiguous, razor-sharp short story writers. They’re all brilliant at undercurrents. They are also all, coincidentally, women, which I’m not sure what to make of but find fascinating.

Strange, surreal, darkly funny and delicious. A voice like no one else’s.

[Troy]

no one makes me feel existential dread like joy williams!

fav stories: chaunt, stuff, after the haiku period, baba iaga and the pelican child

[Andy Weston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here are 12 very different stories which border on being aplocalyptic and yet humanity scrambles on; natural and constructed landscapes are gradually collapsing amongst their unknowing inhabitants.

The beginning story sets the tone well. Flour concerns a journey with no destination, of someone wealthy enough not to work, although the details are unspecific enough to defy reference. 'The driver and I got a late start.' it begins. Its immediately compelling, both from curiosity's sake, and the element of the surreal that surrounds it.

It continues with Stuff, one my favourites, though there are few duds here. Henry, a well-meaning but talentless journalist, visits the doctor where he is told he has lung cancer. Although there’s been a mistake, the doctor having read from the wrong file belonging to an older patient, 'You have lung cancer as well, a bit more advanced, actually,' the doctor tells him. 'Sorry about the mix-up.' Henry changes the topic, trying to ignore the doctor's words, asking if he will waive the parking fee before admitting 'if the recently condemned weren’t required to pay their fair share, the lot would bring in no money at all.' In the world Williams is describing, the parking lot takes precedence.
There is great variety though, some of the stories are more grounded, for example, My First Car and The Beach House.

In My First Car, the protagonist, a motel clerk named Cinnabar, works at an infant daycare for a week while the owner takes a sabbatical to pray for the children's health. A key detail concerns Cinnabar driving her Oldsmobile, she refuses to use the indictators, saying, 'Why should I show Death where I'm going.'

George and Susan and Nettle though, read more like ghost stories, though by no means the traditional type. In Nettle, the protagonist Willie, a grown man, is still caught in the emotional landscape of his childhood, navigating his world with his late father. In George and Susan the ghost of George, who never set foot in the USA in life, is on a pilgrimage to Susan Sontag's childhood home in Arizona.

This is my first experience of reading Williams, and I enjoyed it greatly - I will be back for more. I prefer her more surreal stories, of which there are plenty, they have just that touch of dark humour to them that really appeals to my rather strange tastes..

[v · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read each story in this collection, one after another, waiting, waiting waiting waiting. That's all I was getting: the chance to wait some more. Joy Williams, the coolest cat in little New Yorkerville, has to have done better work and maybe I'll read that someday.

His mother did not believe in fate.
"Then what do you call what happens?" he asked her.

[Elea · Rating 2 out of 5]

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Als je in pure verwarring wilt zitten, pak dit boek op! De verhalen zijn te kort om duidelijkheid te scheppen (en heel eerlijk heb ik de laatste 2 overgeslagen).

[Joseph Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great. Just about as good as The Visiting Privilege. Weird enough to be weird, but normal and plausible… as the spectrum of life often is.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always a pleasure to read Williams.

[Rachel Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore short stories, and I especially adore strange short stories. That’s exactly what you’ll find here, and some of these are absolute gems. Williams’ writing is impeccable, and her stories draw the reader deeply into their surreal spaces. My favorites were Chaunt, which features, among numerous interesting facets, a mysterious un-town visited frequently by two young boys; Argos, which is brief and perfect; and Baba Iaga & The Pelican Child, which scratched my insatiable itch for good fairytales.

That said, this book and I initially got off on the wrong foot with the first two stories, which I did not enjoy. I would encourage anyone that is turned off by the beginning of this collection to press on.

My ratings by story:

Flour - 2.0
Stuff - 2.5
The Fellow - 3.0
Nettle - 3.5
George & Susan - 4.0
After the Haiku Period - 4.0
Chaunt - 5.0
My First Car - 3.5
Argos - 5.0
Chicken Hill - 4.0
The Beach House - 4.0
Baba Iaga & The Pelican Child - 4.5

Thank you to Knopf, Joy Williams, and NetGalley for this eARC. All opinions are my own.

[JPD · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a gift card for Christmas that required me to go into a bookstore, so I picked this book up on a table surrounded by the new Danielewski (have it), Pynchon (have enough unread of his), and Rushdie (Grimus at some point). This edition, while ultimately unimportant to me, was a signed edition. There was a blurb talking about her and Gaddis, and I remember the intro in JR, but I do not remember anything about what she wrote. Anyway.

"Nothing alarms the monied class more than a powerful sense of guilt" (69).

The Pelican Child is a collection about dogs, sadness, death, and a little bit about the color yellow. The favorites of mine are Stuff (protagonist finds out he has lung cancer and the ripple effect that follows), George & Susan (a dead person obsessed with Susan Sontag, who is also dead), After the Haiku Period (Old money twins who studied Issa), Chicken Hill (Kids are dying around the protagonist and there is a fond remembrance on said hill), and The Beach House (middle aged daughter fighting to keep a rundown beach house while nonplussed brother and schizo father try to sell it).

There are themes of change and references to the "good old days," while implying they were never really that good. It's overall lovely.

If I ever decide to write short stories, I will reference this and Flannery O'Connor structurally.

[Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

Uniquely haunting, bleak and quite cynical. Weird in that dissociative, existential kind of way. Even the dialogue is sort of off-kilter and humanly awkward. Nearly every story in here feels like a fever dream, touches on, if not fully embraces, the messiness of death, grief and embodies a theme of utter disappointment in humanity. I randomly picked this one up at the library and will be purchasing it to add to my own collection, this is definitely one I’m eager to reread.

There are many lines I read over and over again because there was so much to pull from her ideas and word combinations. My rating is only shy of a 5 because there are some stories that ended abruptly or without finality (I feel this is a common short story problem), but I really did love this. I especially loved Stuff, Argos, Chaunt and the title feature Baba Iaga & The Pelican Child. The latter felt like the grim underbelly of a Studio Ghibli film which was cool. Argos (a story told from the perspective of Odysseus’ abandoned dog) was clever, tragic and ultimately so sweet. A total gut punch packed into a short couple pages.

Stuff:
“Your father and I have always found the world to be unfamiliar, but it was the custom then to behave otherwise.”

Chaunt:
“Many had tattoos creeping all over their bodies…The youths didn’t want to wait until they were dead for pretty words to be carved on their gravestones. They wanted the pretty words now.”

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

this one is for the joy stans, not sure if I would recommend it as a starting point if you’re new to her work.

anyway I hope she has like 10 more books left in her before she dies

[Ethan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now That's What I Call Oblique Storytelling

[Jessica Haider · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 stars

[Ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ooo unique poetic short stories!! Here are some excerpts:

"She fought the desert with her every cell
It was difficult work. To live against oneself, that this is the ideal because the self does not exist."

"The twins had long harbored the desire to murder their father and make the most modest point that greed and desecration do not always go unpunished."


"I had waited for my absent master for twenty years and when he returned he came in the guise of a beggar, a mangy tramp, a bag of bones."

"Baba iaga had a daughter, a pelican child. This did not please her particularly. The pelican child was stunningly strange and beautiful as well as being very very good."

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

My 4th joy williams and second favourite next to Harrow.
I think she’s a genius and The Best Writer of contemporary fiction I’ve read hands down. I will probably spend the next five years trying & failing to copy her.

Stories I’ll return to: After the Haiku Period; George and Susan; My First Car; Baba Iaga & The Pelican Child.

[Edward Habib · Rating 2 out of 5]

4/10.

When I read short story anthologies, I usually review and comment on each story separately. It isn't worth the time or effort to do so this time. I took a chance on The Pelican Child entirely based on its name and the beautiful cover, and I was looking to read some short stories as a palate cleanser. What I had hoped would be a pleasant, charming set of stories turned out to be a soulless slog. I can't think of the last time reading so little felt like it demanded so much. The stories in this book are full of miserable people being unkind and cynical while very little of interest happens. If you enjoy spending time in nursing homes and gross motels with the sick, the dying, the suicidal, the cynical, and the entitled, then maybe these vignettes are for you.

When I got to the final story in the book, the titular "Baba Iaga & The Pelican Child" I was pleasantly surprised that there was finally a sprinkle of narrative and fantasy, but even then the story just devolves into randomness. Willaims' stories tend to just zig-zag all over the place and trick you into thinking there's some hidden meaning beneath all the grumbling. If there is, I really didn't see it.

[Anna Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not get these at all. Unpleasantly nihilistic and deliberately inaccessible. Every page was laden with smug pseudo-intellectualism (was it supposed to be ironic?). Only gave it 2 stars as the final story (which goes the collection it’s name) was a fantastic modern fairy tale.