RaveThe Washington PostWith Dear Life, her engrossing new collection of stories, Munro can count on more critical acclaim and public appreciation, for there is no writer quite as good at illustrating the foibles of love, the confusions and frustrations of life or the inner cruelty and treachery that can be revealed in the slightest gestures and changes of tone ... Reckless passion and impulsiveness are as common in these stories as hopelessness or a vague discontent ... Men are generally negative fields of force in these 14 rueful stories, with women seemingly only in their planetary orbit ... Written in wry, limpid prose and constructed in a seemingly plotless, elliptical way, the stories of Dear Life violate a host of creative writing rules, but they establish yet again Munro’s psychological acuity, clear-eyed acceptance of frailties and mastery of the short story form.
John Updike
RaveThe Washington PostI have rarely encountered fiction that so genially recounts the frailties of old age … In general the characters are flush New Englanders with children and grandchildren, who have the wealth for exotic travel and the luxury of time for reminiscence or, as Updike calls it, ‘personal archaeology.’ Hints of death and dying faintly tinge every story, but there is no pathos or urging to not go gently into that good night; there is just the realist's ironic shrug over the way things are and a healthy appreciation for the largely unrecognized heroism of facing life's decline … My Father's Tears is a self-conscious salute to a grand career of imagining and gorgeously describing our America, along with a wink of gratitude to those readers who have shared the journey.
Junot Diaz
RaveThe Washington Post...Yunior, returns to narrate the nine linked stories of Diaz’s impressive new story collection, This Is How You Lose Her ...the pattern for most of the stories that feature Yunior, a pining, self-lacerating, weed-smoking schmo who confuses lust with love and generally wrecks his relationships with jealousy, infidelity, machismo or the sheer inability to act ... Written in a singular idiom of Spanglish, hip-hop poetry and professorial erudition, it is comic in its mopiness, charming in its madness and irresistible in its heartfelt yearning.
