Superb ... This may be Towles’ best book yet. Each tale is as satisfying as a master chef’s main course, filled with drama, wit, erudition and, most of all, heart ... These stories make clear that, at heart, he is a humanist with deep compassion for even the faultiest among us.
A knockout collection of six stories and a longish novella ... eneath his coifed prose Towles is a master of the shiv, the bait and switch; we see the flash of light before the shock wave strikes, often in the final sentence ... Sharp-edged satire deceptively wrapped like a box of Neuhaus chocolates, Table for Two is a winner.
These are jam-packed, juicy stories with lots of plot ... It's incredibly satisfying, old-fashioned storytelling with characters you care about, surprising but logical situations, liberal use of cliffhangers and, in each story, an ending that deals out fate in a way you won't have seen coming ... This is a book so packed with pleasure that even the letters are delightful.
Towles’s characters hit the page like fully sculpted marble: frank in their behavior, obdurate in their morality and, by and large, very good-looking ... Towles thrives at the crossroads of form and technique. There’s not enough room for a character to really mature in 30-odd pages; luckily, Towles doesn’t need them to ... More than delivered. This collection is not just spare pieces to tide readers over until Towles’s next novel. It’s a worthwhile addition to his growing oeuvre.
Towles sometimes lays on the philosophical wisdom and historical knowledge a bit, but the novella and all the stories are treated to his understated (and occasionally mischievous) irony. A sneakily entertaining assortment of tales.
