Williams’s writing communicates the same sort of joy in inventing and sharing sentences that makes reading, say, Ali Smith or Hilary Mantel such a delight. Unpredictable thoughts spill out: “my spirit animal is probably a buttered roll” or “For example, we’re missing a snail insisting that he’s in the haulage business.” It captures a moment, as the doors on a District Line train open, accompanied by the semi-drunken rush of thought of our narrator, travelling with someone they hope to invite home. To their own astonishment, as they hesitate to ask, the narrator also reaches out and places a hand on the forehead of man on the platform to prevent him from boarding. In the staggered layout of the text, the thoughts within thoughts, Williams gives us the euphoric, confused, overwhelming feeling of falling for someone, and of doing something completely out of character, trying to control everything in one perfect second, in a place that feels crushingly familiar. I think I’m the third person on here to cite this story, after CD Rose and Naomi Frisby. [In fact the fourth: Joanna Walsh also picked it – Ed.]
First published in 3:am Magazine, 2014, and available to read here. Collected in Attrib., Influx Press, 2017
A Personal Anthology 