Haunting

Stunning

A torrent of a book – take the plunge

This novel of spiritual desolation and redemption gathers such an awesome, tragic momentum that the fantastical aspects seem as crucial to the story as do the raging rivers, sheer gorges and imposing rainforests

Death of a River Guide is possessed of both a fierce, seething energy and a limpid, unexpected tranquillity

One of the most auspicious debuts in Australian writing

A vivid, voluptuous, exhilarating writer

Death of a River Guide defies superlatives. It is that rare commodity - a wonderful fiction which has pace, depth of feeling, and infinite imaginative possibilities

Combines a rich voice, highly original, with great invention and engrossing narrative pace...very, very good indeed

Butcher’s Crossing is remarkable for the accuracy of Williams’s prose

Intense, unflinching lucidity

[Williams] has produced something timeless and great’ ‘Butcher’s Crossing, written in 1960 and Williams’s first mature novel, is far removed from the time and place of Stoner. It may also be the better novel

Had me on the edge of my seat... If you do not read another book all year, read this one. At the end, I was quite gasping for breath

It is a novel of great beauty and power, and it deserves the same belated recognition accorded Stoner

From the author of Stoner, a western full of the same psychological intensity

supremely well-written and built to last

Readers of Stoner will hopefully come to Butcher’s Crossing to get more of what Williams can provide: thoughtfulness, strong writing, powerful characterisation, involving drama and images and details that remain in the reader’s mind long after reading

The evocation of landscape is unforgettable

Williams's intense semi-skimmed prose – so different from [Herman] Melville's full-fat variety – has the same power to mesmerize... Likely to become a favourite of 2014

The tale of men struggling to survive in a brutal landscape is told in language so sparse that whole passages are made up of monosyllabic vocabulary that is powerfully immersive. You can only guess at the influence Williams may have had on Cormac McCarthy

Williams is a versatile writer: the story of Will Andrews couldn't be more different to the tale of William Stoner – and his depiction of the behaviour of men in extreme situations is masterful

A meditative cowboy yarn with a putative ecological message, it could not be more different from Williams’s [Stoner]; it is just as good

It is a sort of Dances with Buffaloes, and one of the most tense, gripping, tragic novels I have ever read

Stoner...is a fine book but his western novel Butcher's Crossing is even better... Visceral, violent and chilling.

A novel that turns upside down the expectations of the genre—and goes to war with a century of American triumphalism, a century of regeneration through violence, a century of senseless slaughter.