[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.
Schiff’s female protagonists leave their sexual encounters sore, in need of chiropractic care, disconnected from their bodies, with sexually transmitted infections, utterly unsatisfied: 'Guys burrowed down not for long enough, popped up, smiled.' As an argument, this critique of the sexual revolution is thought-provoking. As stories, however, the sameness starts to feel a little numbing, especially because the female characters (who are deliberately indistinct) seem to be mainly reporting on the state of single womanhood when you are sexually free (or is it slutty?)...When the bed is not moving in The Bed Moved, when Schiff turns her attention from fucking to family, even her more conventional stories have movement and moments of genuine feeling.
