[Schiff's] dark wit gives her stories genuine tensile strength, even when they misfire. She dips into her own braininess as if it were a bottomless trust fund...If these stories are not the real thing, they’re such a good imitation of it that the distinction is meaningless. Ms. Schiff has an almost Nabokovian boldness and crispness of phrase.
[U]nlike other writers of her ilk, Schiff doesn’t tell these tales in a gritty, realistic style, shedding light on something sinister lurking beneath the characters’ sexual whims. Instead, her very short stories are spare and buoyant, bouncing from one insight to the next. Like smart, confident teens trying out new belief systems in earnest, her characters make assured, funny observations about their peers, and then, lightly, move on...These funny, on-the-nose observations might turn off readers who prefer quiet stories. But, the stand-up routine-like quality of Schiff’s characters’ thoughts lends itself to frank discussions of established dating norms.
I loved The Bed Moved. I love the traditions of narrative obsession, syntactic contortion, and blurt-it-out black humor from which it springs ... My favorite moments in The Bed Moved pushed past Woody Allen-ish nebbishing and Amy Schumer-ish schlemieling to arrive at a place of bracing savagery ... So much darkness delivered in such consistent doses risks habituation, but Schiff keeps things lively with her fearlessness and/or shamelessness and/or fearlessness of shame. This quality—and the refusal or inability to distinguish its different versions from each other—marks Schiff as heir to a specifically American Jewish tradition.
