The stories in Thirteen Ways of Looking reflect an understanding of the swiftly disappearing flow of our lives as knowing and unflinching as any by Joyce or Chekhov.
[McCann's] story 'Sh'Khol,' included in Thirteen Ways of Looking, is as fine a piece of short fiction as I've read in the last five years. It's haunting and surprising, like everything from this amazing writer.
McCann tries his best here to allow his creative imagination to do the work of forgiveness, of impartiality, to imagine himself—as a good fiction writer must do—not just as one perspective on the drama but as all of them. That he has fallen somewhat short of that priestly goal is not only understandable; it’s somehow more interesting, more moving, more distinctly human than it would have been had he succeeded.
