Honest, daring, funny, and smart, perfectly calibrated, perfectly observed. No short story writer today is better than Eisenberg at conveying the shifting nuances of self-doubt, self-consciousness, and self-deception.

There is something delicious and maddening about D.E's stories. Delicious because her prose is so cool and lucid, her take on emotional subtext in the interaction between people so accute. Maddening because she brings you so close to people's souls. There is something infuriating about knowing people like that and then having them vanish. In a way it's an argument for novels, though satiation always makes youa little ill.

I think D.E. is a brilliant realist. I've just surfed around the Amazon reader reviews for the first time. It's amazing, but worrisom, all those voices, because so many seem enthralled by fantasy. Eisenberg is about the real. That she is able to elucidate often painful situations with such beauty and wit is our good fortune.

I can think of no contemporary writer as underappreciated and brilliant as Deborah Eisenberg. Eisenberg plumbs emotional depths few writers dare even approach and yet never at the expense of the heart. I highly reccomend all of her work to anyone who appreciates excellent, brave writing.

After reading (and enjoying) a short story from this author in The New Yorker's recent anthology "Wonderful Town", I decided to try one of her own anthologies. I was sadly disappointed as the stories in her book were more complex, and the premises very different from the original one which brought me here.

Eisenberg's prose is poignant and percise. She cuts through the circumstance and gets right to the heart of what it really feels like to be alive. The stories are vivid, easy to read, touching and above all real. In particular Mermaids, The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor, and Rosie Gets a Soul hit a resonant chord within me. I finished the book the night I bought it, and had re-read half of it by morning. One of the most satisfying purchases I've made in years.

Just when I was sure Deborah Eisenberg's short stories couldn't get any better than the genius found in her earlier collections, I read this perfect book of short stories. Her use of dialogue is more innovative than any I've seen in contemporary writers and the depths of her intelligence and sentiment are staggering. I would reccomend this book to anyone and everyone. Some of the stories demand rereading and all are classics of contemporary literature.