'The Quick And The Dead': Parables Of Doom And Merry Rapture
The desert is a metaphor, of course, but forget that for now, because there are so many other characters in this novel, and all of them are having wicked fun. Like Annabel's father, Carter, and his dead wife, Ginger, an angry specter who refuses to go gently into that good night — not when she can sit around and torture her closet case of a husband from the ineffable beyond.
Then there's Sherwin, a dinner-party pianist, lazy existentialist and self-proclaimed parasuicide, who tries to find salvation in a sexless affair with Alice. Williams' masterful, roving point of view dips in and out of each character's troubled mind, weaving together these parables of doom and merry rapture.
Animals and objects are granted the same measure of narrative dignity as are men, women and children. Saguaros, highway off-ramps, the atrophied feet of a man determined to die with perfect awareness — all these things get a voice, so to speak. Dogs are integral characters in several plot lines — they live and die and disappoint like everything else under the sun.
Williams creates a grim and sunny cosmos where anything is possible — anything, that is, except sentimentality and self-deception. The best characters in The Quick and the Dead are on the brink of understanding something fundamental — that human beings are God's greatest mistake. Our world is so baffling, unfair and ineluctable. Like the friendship among the three teenage girls who steer this grand cast of characters toward the end of the book, perhaps toward the end of the world.
What are you supposed to do with a message like that? Dry your eyes and rejoice! Risk everything! Or, in my case, ditch your job so you can go home and read.
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Read an excerpt of The Quick and the Dead