“Lethem’s short stories are surrealisms. Comparisons to the other great surrealists of short fiction would be apt, but he’s created his own mode, and naming his influences maybe obscures his particular achievement. They start as ideas, as in 1950s science fiction or European folk tales, ideas that are clear, startling, bold, strange, memorable. Then they unfold into character sketches as in the realist tradition, full of heart and soul, pain and hilarity. This fusion of real and surreal is what makes these stories so Lethemesque, and so very good. Take one at a time, like strong medicine, or rare gifts.”
—KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

“How fortunate to have new and collected stories, because while amazing individually, cumulatively the effect is stunning. That last story: Oh! Lethem creates characters who finger the worry beads in their pockets unseen, conjuring those same hard realities into stepping stones to move the story forward. I read the stories as journeys with significant digressions. You can imagine the writer pointing his magic wand in many directions, but the stories’ sense of weird inevitability can’t be anticipated; up pop our cultural dreams or nightmares, our off-kilter relationships, our personal sadnesses. There’s a lot of implicit yearning in these stories, sometimes displaced onto the strangest creatures, embodied in metaphor, or providing a whiff of literary allusion. Nobody does it better.”
—ANN BEATTIE

“I’m smitten with this collection, which feels as essential as The Fortress of Solitude or Motherless Brooklyn. Thirty-five years of asynchronous pleasure! Here is Lethem at his mind-melting best—as counter-clock-world builder, merry dystopian, king of sentences.”
-ED PARK