The most perceptive author of the twentieth century

Yates is a realist par excellence, the natural heir to Hemingway's pared-to-the-bones style and the antecedent of Carver's flat minimalism. There is something else though: a kind of transparency, almost a translucency, that owes more to Fitzgerald, his great literary hero... Read and weep

Yates created what is almost the New York equivalent of Dubliners

Eloquent and powerful... Wryly funny even when he's quietly tearing your heart out

Extravagantly gifted... Yates' eye and ear are unsurpassed; I know of no writer whose senses are in more admirable condition. It is they that make his characters live, make these stories move and beat - they, and the sure perfection of his writing

The stories are sharply focused, beautifully written and powerfully moving. I know of no collection like it. Deservedly it has become a classic

Yates is a master of the form