On Joy Williams's "Harrow"

"Harrow" is the kind of book that makes you want to own books, to note and flag and mark as yours, with questions for a future you—maybe not even you, especially not you, come to think of it—to solve or ponder, or at the very least to stir you into looking above the page and into a distance out far, beyond anything in your home or your neighborhood or really any visible eyeline, bending back to you, back at the book you've marked, and closing the loop that ties stories to truth.

"Harrow" isn't a particularly good novel, mind you, or even intelligible at times, but God, you catch yourself thinking, isn't that breathing I hear within?