In Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty, Diane Williams lays bare the urgency and weariness that shape our lives in stories honed sharper than ever. With sentences auguring revelation and explosion, Williams' unsettling stories—a cryptic meeting between neighbors, a woman's sexual worries, a graveside discussion, a chimney on fire—are narrated with razor-sharp tongues and naked, uproarious irreverence. These fifty stories hum with tension, each one so taut that it threatens to snap and send the whole thing sprawling—the mess and desire, the absurdity and hilarity, the bruises and bleeding, the blushes and disappointments and secrets. An audacious, unruly tour de force, Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty cements Diane Williams' position as one of the best practitioners of the short form in literature today. My defects—Between midnight and 6 am—If told correctly it will center on me—Pedestal—Death bed—Glee—My first real home—Broom—On the job—Mood which gripped me—The use of fetishes—Woman in rose dress—Weight, hair, length—Cockeyed—The wedding mask door pull—Religious behavior—Highlights of the twilight—The newly made supper—Ponytail—Chicken Winchell—The emporium—Give them stuff—The duck—If you ever get three or four laughing, you weren't soon to forget it—Protection, prevention, gazing, gratified desire—Vicky Swanky was a beuaty—Carnegie nail—Stop when the person becomes restless or irritable—Stand—One of the great drawbacks—Common body—Human being—I like the fringe—Rude—Mrs. Keable's brothers—New life from dead things—None of this would have been remotely feasible—Tan bag—Arm under the soil—Being stared at—Expectant motherhood—Comfort—The strength—This has to be the best—A man, an animal—Shelter—Enormously pleased—Hello! Hi! Hello! — Defeat—As the world turned out—Lord of the face