The Beauty and the Hell of It & Other Stories by Lynda Williams

Life is wonderful and challenging, complicated and hard. That much you might easily take away from the title of Lynda Williams’s debut short story collection, The Beauty and the Hell of It. The phrase comes from the title story:

The thing about marriage, Liam realized, is that you have to keep choosing your partner over and over. It was the beauty and the hell of it.

So true.

And it’s the kind of complication that lives in the gut, not the heart. It has to do with resilience and endurance. And hope. Living, sometimes, on the edge.

Can you get it back? That thing that you had. Can that thing evolve into a new thing? Uncertainty and ambiguity permeate everything. Can you, like Samuel Beckett, carry on? You carry on.

The 16 stories that make up Williams’s collection are sharp, delightful, ironic, contemporary, humourous, and deeply human. They capture characters in their dark moments, their fulfilled moments, their up, down, and sideways moments.

The whole human comedy is depicted here, often from a feminist perspective, serving deserved hot, illuminating shots of female rage. There is also much death, often within the frame of the story, characters slow walking grief or moving forward despite feeling numb.

In “The Encounter,” the protagonist is a plus-one at a wedding, only to discover the groom is her rapist, and everything she ever hoped to forget comes flooding back. In “The Box,” a university student takes a class dedicated to Emily Carr, Georgia O’Keefe, and Frida Kahlo and discovers the professor is young, male, and kind of hot. “Matches” begins: “Ten hours before my sister’s wedding, I decide to paint the bedroom green.”

Life equals complications; complications equal drama; drama equals story. Williams has more than a knack for capturing the drama of life’s complications. She also has a super facility for irony, understatement, broad humour, and the well-chosen phrase. That decision to paint the bedroom? “Of all of the decisions I have made in the past six months, this one is the most sound.”

Life equals complications; complications equal drama; drama equals story. Williams has more than a knack for capturing the drama of life’s complications.

Readers may question that protagonist’s logic, but they won’t question the writer’s storytelling. What do we all want to know? Hey, what happens next?! Complications. Deep-gutted human events. Congratulations to Williams for a debut that is far more than sound.

Lynda Williams’ stories have appeared in Grain, the Humber Literary Review, and The New Quarterly, among others. She holds a graduate certificate in Creative Writing from the Humber School for Writers and is a recipient of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award.

Publisher: Guernica Editions (September 1, 2025)
Paperback 8″ x 5″ | 250 pages
ISBN: 9781771839686

Michael Bryson

Michael Bryson has been reviewing books since the 1990s in publications such as The Kitchener-Waterloo Record, Paragraph Magazine, Id Magazine, and Quill & Quire. His short story collections include Thirteen Shades of Black and White (1999) and The Lizard and Other Stories (2009). His fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories and other anthologies. His story Survival is available as a Kindle single. From 1999-2018, he oversaw 78 issues of fiction, poetry, reviews, author interviews, essays, and other features at The Danforth Review. He lives in Scarborough, Ontario, and blogs at Art/Life: Scribblings.