Taking Care, story by story and incident by incident, withdraws meaning from the lives it represents. In each case, what remains is a gem of despair, worked into the shape of finality by skillful sleights of hand.

Williams's characters usually live in the suburbs or the small coastal towns of Florida and New England. They are divorced or remarried, in their mid 20s or 30s, the parents of small children. There are exceptions…. On the whole, though, Williams focuses on ordinary moments in familiar lives. Ordinary moments, as she conceives them, are the most vulnerable to horror….

In prose as coldly intense as fluorescent lighting, Williams displays the wares of everyday life, a collection of objects that in the aggregate exert pressure on her characters, urging them toward madness…. Williams's men and women find themselves suddenly stranded in the surreal, like shoppers in a no-exit supermarket. And the...