I’ve read nothing better this year than The Stories of John Cheever.

Cheever's accomplishment in his exacting art is proportionally large, as solid as it is brilliant, and likely to endure

Currently I'm reading John Cheever's Collected Stories. My God, he was good

'The Swimmer' is a masterpiece of mystery, language and sorrow

I reread Cheever's 'The Swimmer' late the other night. It had the effect that reading Cheever always has: it made me want to get up and start the futile task of trying to write something as measured yet mysteriously, heart-judderingly unexpected for myself

Magnificently touching, moving and funny, and often set in an imaginary but archetypically well-heeled American suburb

John Cheever understood fallibility and that made for the greatness in his writing

A writer of grace and wit, quietly dealing with people, like himself, who sense that their seemly, well-respected lives are being lived upon a precipice

[They] define what a short story should be - intense, moving and resonant

All the elements of Welsh's best work remain in tact here: the brilliant imagination, the phonetically-transcribed Scots dialect, the humour, the gritty realism

What's striking about these early stories is that the thicker Welsh was steeped in the primordial goo of his Edinburgh Scots phonetics, the better the storytelling got

As you would expect, the stories in this collection involve a certain amount of cultural tourism to the lower depths, undertaken with black humour... Welsh's relish for degradation covers up a strong sentimental streak

Welsh's transcription of Scots dialect is brilliant... Welsh also has a fabulous sense of the absurd... The overall vibe of these stories is dark and grim. And fierily, fiercely funny

A sparkling and adventurous writer