How does Murakami manage to make poetry while writing of contemporary life and emotions? I am weak-kneed with admiration

Enchanting...intriguing... All of these tales have a wonderfully surreal quality and a hip, witty tone

All the stories take place in parallel worlds not so much remote from ordinary life as hidden within its surfaces: secret alleys that afford unexpected - and unsettling - views

Like the best thriller fiction, it nags you with the sensation that Something Nasty is about to happen

Most collections of short stories work by the interplay of different voices. This one offers the more satisfying rewards of a novel: unity of tone and a richness of recurring detail that creates its own texture: spaghetti, lawns, hamburgers, beer-drinking, kid sisters, Sunday afternoons, a man's name

One of the most popular novelists in the world...his fiction hits a nerve... Haunted breaks new ground

Tóibín's deceptively straightforward style continues to manage somehow to encompass both lucidity and ambiguity, precision and poetry

Exquisite

These stories are always intensely interesting and sometimes profoundly provocative

Perfect; and as good as the best of William Trevor, than which there can be no higher praise

A blinding display of mischievous wit and excruciating humour

One of the greatest short story writers alive