Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine - Softcover

A taut collection of flash fictions that are often beautiful but impenetrable, structured like little riddles to unspool. While it is easy to compare Williams's work to that of Lydia Davis, another expert writer of absurdist shorts, this collection stands in its own category as defiantly whimsical and weird... Williams creates stories that can be consumed in small bites. But she provides enough material in each to chew over for an entire meal. --The New York Times

The whip-quick snapshots in Diane Williams's Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine (McSweeney's) pack a sizable punch; to read is to tread unstable ground. Discomfitingly and devastatingly funny, Williams upends the mundane, the painful, and the unusual, resulting much in the way an art teacher might ask her class to copy a photograph upside-down in precision and clarity. --Elle Magazine

In a story called 'The Great Passion and Its Context,' one of Williams' narrators stands on public transportation with an injured foot, anxiously echoing Markun: "What's still to come? a warm flat landscape? a shallow swimming pool? the complete ruin of her health? her absolute devotion to anyone?" The only answer comes in the form of children singing a duet three rows ahead of her: "They offer their share of resistance to you name it! in a remote and difficult key, and in poor taste artistically." If you can hold onto some vestige of poignancy in the face of that ironic exclamation mark and deflating final clause, you've found your new favorite writer. Williams has been plumbing this territory for decades she's published eight books before this one and her confidence with language is frankly unnerving. She makes it jump through hoops, and a reader had better be willing to follow. --The Chicago Tribune

Diane Williams is the author of eight books, including a collection of her selected stories. She is also the founder and editor of the literary annual NOON which is acclaimed both here and abroad. She lives in New York City.