[An] ingenious and entertaining collection... the stories could not be more varied in tone and approach, from Colm Tóibín’s beautifully measured “Silence”...to Amit Chaudhuri’s bouncily rhythmical “Wensleydale”...the individuality of the entries does not preclude entertainment – there is much playfulness and not a little comedy here

Wonderful short stories...It is fascinating to see how familiar writers such as Colm Tóibín, Rose Tremain, Tessa Hadley and Lynn Truss match their own style to quintessentially Jamesian themes: a father who isn’t who he appeared to be; a ghostly reminder of past loss; an affair that never quite caught fire. Each story is different, but the hand of the master is clearly detectable throughout, a gentle guide that shapes the telling.

In this volume, the appreciation of his unwritten tales by eleven fine contemporary authors pays handsome dividends

The short story should be a gem of bright, quick, vivid form

Henry James is as solitary in the history of the novel as Shakespeare is in the history of poetry

In the hands of these authors, James's plots are, if not quite infected with James's style, haunting. James haunts us, but these authors haunt him... It's nice to feel the tick of his pen, drawn on in fresh print

The collection testifies to Groff’s brilliance as a writer of both places and people. She grapples with interpersonal relations and the inner lives of others with perceptiveness, wit and emotional engagement.

Easily the year’s best story collection . . . these indelibly vivid tales read like inoculations against cynicism.

She is an example of writers who can do everything – dialogue, structure, the throb and hum of inner life – so brilliantly. The result is so heady and evocative, you’ll be wafting away imaginary heat waves and checking your room for scaly threats as you read, while Florida’s cast of lost, sad and sometimes cruel characters will stick with you far longer.

An unsettling, stinging collection that feeds on Florida’s paradoxes.

She boldly explores conflicts and connections between everything from humans and their natural surroundings to pleasure and pain.

These psychological stories, whose impeccable structures are at odds with the chaos they often describe, provide glimpses into a variety of lives under the same tempestuous sky.

One of the most eagerly anticipated short story collections of the year.

A connoisseur of the tension between appearance and depth. Her dazzling third novel, Fates and Furies, a portrait of a marriage built on secrets, was nominated for the National Book Award. Her new collection plunges into similarly murky terrain … There is more than a little of David Lynch in Ms Groff's Floridian landscape: exotic and bright, yet pulsing with hidden malevolence … Real and metaphorical storms proliferate, along with ghosts, alligators and snakes. Two menaces in particular slither through Ms Groff's work: the obliteration of women by marriage and motherhood, and looming environmental collapse … Against these threats Ms Groff sets the particularity of individual lives, love and above all language. Her own is alive to Florida's lush, beguiling beauty … Ms Groff's writing is marvellous, her insights keen, each story a glittering, encrusted treasure hauled from the deep.

Explores the contradictions of a maddening and seductive state … Female characters in the collection find themselves isolated and endangered, exposed and compelled to let the elements have their way with them.

A kaleidoscopic portrait of one state.

Though Groff moves adroitly through an impressive range of lives, times, and places, the stories often seem propelled more by a supercharged pathetic fallacy than by action and character . . . the landscape and fauna seem to make metaphor on a monumental scale. . . . The book stages an intriguing relationship between the individual and the collective . . . Climate change, though explicitly addressed only in glances, is a palpable threat, given a force still unusual in fiction by a treatment that makes it hard to distinguish from interior phenomena.

the collection testifies to Groff’s brilliance as a writer of both places and people. She grapples with interpersonal relations and the inner lives of others with perceptiveness, wit and emotional engagement

The realism of Groff’s stories is matched by her lyricism: botanical details and evocations of weather give her prose an addictive quality

There are panthers, snakes and hurricanes heading in the direction of the angry, lonely characters in Lauren Groff's vivid stories, but the greatest threat comes from their own unwieldy feelings, as doubt, regret and dissatisfaction scupper all notions of emotional security.

Lush, and tinged with paranoia…[Groff] should be better known in Britain.

My god, can Lauren Groff write or what?! ... This short story collection showcases a master craftswoman whose sentences reverberate with depth and power.

[A] strikingly vivid Florida of the mind…an extraordinary trip for the reader.

Groff's writing is clever, caustic yet with a mother's tender sensibility. And such powers of description!... I was blown away!

Superb stories.

Lyrical, lacerating collection.

Groff's writing is superb and she captures her characters eccentricities or their bizarre situations perfectly. There are laugh out loud moments with some parts that were odd and some even creepy. Everyone who will read this collection will definitely get something out of it.

Groff's mastery of language, plot and dialogue are on full display in a set of stories that linger long after you've closed the last page.

[A] masterclass in writing about the edges of everyday life. This collection of short stories that all link to the Sunshine State captures loneliness, alienation, abandonment and inner resourcefulness in the most creative of tales.

Fantastical tales ... You'll be swept up in a wild hurricane of a ride with this lyrical stories of fury and love, loss and hope.

Each story is perfectly formed, exquisite, often troubling but there is something so brilliantly humane about her work.

The five darkly comic stories that comprise The Largesse of the Sea Maiden are befitting final testaments to [Johnson’s] wild originality... His sentences, like his plots, are full of gorgeous little shocks.