Jackson at her best: plumbing the extraordinary from the depths of mid-twentieth-century common. [Just an Ordinary Day] is a gift to a new generation

For Jackson devotees, as well as first-time readers, this is a feast ... A virtuoso collection

One of the great practitioners of the literature of the darker impulses

The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable

A dark, disturbing, wonderful treat ... A collection to press on people and demand they read

There’s a psychological acuity and emotional understanding to Mary Morrissy’s stories, along with a barbed wit, that can only be achieved by the very best of writers… These 18 stories are so crammed with warmth, wit and insight that I wished for 18 more. Marvellous.

Makes for exquisite reading… We are left with the urge to go back and read the book again as so many layers of meaning and possible interpretations co exist inside the tome… Morrissy succeeds in creating a deeply moving work here, one that remains in the mind and the heart, a work of great subtlety and depth, a truly Irish book with a sweeping international feel, a work that asks the big questions and yet these questions are asked with the wisdom necessary to see that for some questions the answers are too daunting to do anything more than raise them and continue to raise them and lead readers and other writers to the doorway of moral choice.

Morrissy wafts pungent scents of our dirty old town at us in her collection of short stories… Morrissy is not without humour, sometimes offering laugh-out-loud observations. But the undercurrent throughout brings to mind Thoreau's line about most men (and women) living lives of quiet desperation. Her style, her intense moments of close clinical dissection, reminds me a little of John Banville. But she shows more compassion for her cast of characters, perhaps not unlike Alice Munro. All human life is indeed there in Prosperity Drive… It’s a magnificent read.

Demands that the reader immerse herself within its world… Much of the considerable power of Morrissy’s prose lies in her technique of dipping seamlessly in and out of temps perdu… Prosperity Drive’s epipahnic moments recall Joyce’s Dubliners… The compassion, immediacy, humour and delicacy with which Morrissy depicts their [her character’s] predicaments result in moments of profundity.

A master of language, she is also a keen observer of human nature… I simply loved these stories for their diversity… Sheer perfection throughout… She has the same forensic eye for detail; the same analytical touch, and sleight of language, allied with a quite astonishing ability to get inside her characters’ minds.

The author’s blend of beady-eyed humour and genuine empathy may remind readers of William Trevor.

Sam Miller's memoir Fathers is ostensibly about a family secret. But its true subject is a family silence… The book is about ways to be a father, but also, more generally, about ways to be a man, from the 1950s to now. Should you be an intellectual, and write letters full of irony and wit? How camp are you allowed to be, or how fearful of homoeroticism? Must you be good at manual labour? Where do you stand in relation to class or entitlement? Should you be more interested in football than you are?

Morrissy has been compared to Joyce and Chekov. She’s brilliant.

Mary Morrissy’s persuasive stories sidle up to you quietly and before you know it have you wrapped up in their embrace… We meet people on the edge… in this resonant collection from an accomplished writer.

An outstanding collection…She is a true heir to Chekhov and the great writers

There’s something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful, and even laugh-out-loud funny… Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition. But part of the unique quality of her voice, the echt Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O’Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man is Hard to Find… The dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating.

Moshfegh’s stories are sharp, dark and often horribly funny.