Breaking and Entering

by Joy Williams

Book Overview

From "a brilliant spawn of Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor" ( Elle ) comes a novel starring an exhilarating cast of characters that reflects the search, not just for home, but for self. Willie and Liberty are drifters. They break into Florida vacation homes while the owners are away, stay a while, and then move on. They have been lovers since they were teenagers, yet Liberty now senses that Willie is drifting away from her--that their search,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394757734
• ISBN13: 9780394757735
• Release Date: May 1988
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Looking for love in all the wrong places

I came back to Joyce Williams after reading her story "The Girls"in "Best American Short Stories, 2005." This was a 1988 publication. Another reviewer has given a sample of the quality of the descriptive writing, but it is in the dialog and characterization that she is at her most brilliant. Willie and Liberty are a pair of delinquents who take up residence in the houses of rich and leisured absentee owners. It's often very funny. The first chapter could stand alone as a Joyce Williams short story (I suspect it originally did). Willie is enigmatic and given to statements like "we can't disown the light into which we are born" The story gradually comes to center on Liberty, who has been rejected by her parents and by her foster-parents (who are Willie's parents) and has lost a pregnancy. She poignantly tries to care for Teddy and Dot, two neglected children while fearful of losing Willie. The caste of characters becomes filled with the eccentric and outrageous. It's a wonderful caste but eventually there's too much fruit in the cake. The plot loses coherence. Williams should learn from Shakespeare (one of the few writers superior to her). In Hamlet the prince's behavior is highlighted by the puzzled reactions of those around, by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. A few people acting and talking reasonably would have added a needed touch of realism, even though it's set in Southern Florida.

PeLiCaNS...!

oNe oF THe DaRKeST TaLeS i'Ve eVeR ReaD. VeRy DeeP aND THouGHT PRoVoKiNG...a BooK i'Ve ReCoMMeNDeD MaNY MaNY TiMeS iN THe YeaRS SiNCe i FiRST ReaD iT.

Ome of the best books of all time!

The 1st time I read this book, I flipped it over & began again the second I finished the last page. That was 6 years ago and I have read it many times since. Joy williams tells a sort of falling-out-of-love story...very touching, very poetic, often very funny. The isolation everyone feels in modern society is an omnipresent theme & it is often explored here with a surreal exactness.

icy perfect prose

like the above review notes, there is no reason why Joy Williams isn't a widely read and appreciated author. breaking and entering is a chilling story of isolation, paranoia and senseless postmodernity. The every-word-perfect prose reminds me of Nabokov in that the book is genius just for the way she twists and fashions language into an entirely convincing, if often surreal, journey into secret inner lives. look also for her story "trains" in the vintage contemporaries anthology of short fiction.

sheer genius

Joy Williams is one of the best writers around and it's a complete puzzle why the rest of the world hasn't discovered her. This book, her third novel (she also has two collections of stories and an odd Florida travel guide) is a hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly amazing story of a woman and her lover who break into Florida vacation homes when the owners are away. It's every bit as profound and grotesque as a Flannery O'Connor book.