It's standard to marvel at the amounts of energy and time that can be covered over the fictional sprint distance, but Pearlman is gold medal class at such compressed athleticism ... Issues of racial assimilation and forbidden longing are accommodated with improbable ease in another example of Pearlman perfecting the short-story's Tardis-like trick of having more going on inside than seems possible from the external dimensions. This is achieved through exacting standards of economy in both prose and dialogue; a sentence—even a single word—will be crammed with detail and meaning ... There are echoes of Updike...but such are the multitudes of subject matter, place and structures in this collection that Pearlman finally seems beyond compare. The traditional literary system has worked, though grievously slowly, in giving a genius of the short story her due.
...intelligent, perceptive, funny and quite beautiful ... Pearlman’s prose is smooth and poetic, and her world seems safe and engaging. So it’s arresting when, suddenly, almost imperceptibly, she slips emotion into the narrative, coloring it unexpectedly with deep or delicate hues ... Pearlman doesn’t limit herself to the darker emotions. She has a finely developed sense of the absurd, and comic moments ripple through the narrative ... Pearlman’s view of the world is large and compassionate, delivered through small, beautifully precise moments. Her characters inhabit terrain that all of us recognize, one defined by anxieties and longing, love and grief, loss and exultation. These quiet, elegant stories add something significant to the literary landscape ... the volume is an excellent introduction to a writer who should not need one. Maybe from now on everyone will know of Edith Pearlman.
...one of the truly great things about Pearlman’s writing: its diversity of story and setting ... Binocular Vision is, in many ways...broadcasting her character, her tone, and her ability to the larger world. She is setting a firm stake in the literary landscape that she is a writer to be reckoned with, and even more importantly, that she is a teller of stories that delight, challenge and inspire the reader.
The typical Pearlman story unfolds in a straightforward manner only to reveal—perhaps not until it’s over—a lambent lining. She treats her subjects seriously without ever being self-serious. Her compassion for her characters is leavened with clear-eyed pragmatism. Even the gravest of her stories are marbled with wit. And their range of subject...suggests an unfettered intelligence and capacious appetite ... Her relationship with her characters is one of thoughtful curiosity rather than intimate presumption ... To readers, too, she affords uncommon respect, treating them as capable and intelligent—as collaborators, even.
What makes Pearlman so good? Like [Joan] Didion, she’s a master of the spare sentence, of the restrained emotion ... But where Didion’s detachment can feel ruthless, Pearlman’s is largely compassionate, sometimes even faintly amused. It is the detachment of a good psychologist or a favorite aunt, the kind whose home you want to visit again and again ... Pearlman’s characters rarely buckle under disappointment. Their accommodations are not about turning tail; they allow ways of continuing forward ... Pearlman’s characters are mostly solitary animals, who prize their independence even as they seek and enjoy the company of others. Yet many of them hold to a kind of moral standard.
In settings ranging from unnamed South American countries to the Boston suburbs, from the current day to the last century (e.g., the Russian Revolution, WWII), depictions of people, places, and manners are so perfect that the stories become totally immersive. The characters, always interesting ... Give this wonderful collection to fans of such classic short story writers as Andre Dubus and Alice Munro and novelists like Nicole Krauss. They will thank you.
Elegant, lapidary stories ... Pearlman...is a master of the form, without doubt, though, like V.S. Pritchett, with whom she shares several points in common, there is nothing at all flashy about her fictions. Her stories are lush ... Pearlman’s characters, too, are often layered in symbolism without being mere ciphers ... Most of these stories are earnest, often even grim, though Pearlman is not without a sense of humor ... But humor is not what these stories are about; instead, Pearlman favors the startling moral problem (what should we think of a travel writer who does not travel, but invents places?) and the poetic meditation on family history and the passage of time. Lovely and lyrical—a celebration of language and another virtuoso performance from a writer who does indeed deserve to be better known.
A finely tuned collection by writer's writer Pearlman combines the best of previous collections...with austere, polished new work ... This should win new converts for Pearlman.
