Beautiful Days

Deeply uncanny and hauntingly resonant – strange stories about modern America, for fans of George Saunders, Mariana Enriquez and Shirley Jackson

A young family is trapped in a time loop in an idyllic holiday cabin. A middle-aged man becomes convinced that his disappointing son is an impostor. Two brothers take a midnight ride in a golf cart and run into trouble. The elderly tour guide at an alien contact site loses control of his guests. Meanwhile, all around them, America is dissolving, fragmenting, distorting beyond recognition.

The antiheroes of Beautiful Days are chronic underachievers: men lost in their own lives and plagued by loneliness, self-doubt, suppressed rage. When the worst happens, they take to the road – crossing the wilderness in stolen cars, riding trains to the end of the line, or cruising along ruined monorails as the skyline burns.

Zach Williams' stories are haunted by the ghosts of America – its lost illusions, its dark aspirations, its boundless, disquieting potential. They leak through the fabric of reality and out into the void beyond. And they reach, ever-hopeful, toward a moment of connection that might pull a body back from the brink.

About the Author

Zach Williams was born in Wilmington, Delaware. He holds an MFA from New York University, where his thesis adviser was Zadie Smith, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University 2021-2023. His fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review and McSweeney's. Before becoming a writer, he spent over a decade as a high school English teacher. Zach Williams lives in San Francisco with his wife and their two young children.

Reviews

"A pensive, artfully of-the-moment short story collection in which danger and farce tussle for dominance... Expect offbeat lyricism, dreamlike paranoia and more than a hint of horror" ―Guardian

"Uncanny, subtle and spectacular. Once every year, a debut collection comes along and gets under my skin... In 2024, that collection is Beautiful Days. Fans of Stephen King and Ling Ma will devour [these stories] about the horrors of encountering something completely unknowable in the course of everyday life, whether it’s the mind-warping experience of parenthood or the echo-chamber effect of the internet and social media " ―Esquire

"It is often said that truth is stranger than fiction. But Beautiful Days makes the case for a new adage: strange fiction can help us tell the truth... The entire collection is varied, yet focused; serious, yet throw-your-head-back funny; virtuosic in the way of a writer who will be around for a long time... It calls to mind Donald Barthelme, George Saunders, and Jennifer Egan. Like these writers, Williams uses his strange and scary premises to reveal the persistent humanity of his characters" ―Chicago Review of Books

"Zach Williams is a brilliant, singular, deeply entertaining writer. You will continue to think about and feel these stories long after you have finished reading them. They will change you" —Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated

"One of 2024’s superlative debuts, a glorious creepfest reminiscent of Carmen Maria Machado and Mariana Enríquez... Williams’s characters grapple with grief and foreboding... [his] technique is subtle but strikes with a bullwhip’s torque... As close to transcendence as it gets, Beautiful Days is the spear tip of Zach Williams' potential. This writer’s got talent to burn" ―Washington Post

Dimensions: 13.5 x 1.8 x 21.6 cm