One of the most soulful writers in America, and a national treasure

A poet of the short story, Stuart Dybek is a strange and exceptional talent… Impressive.

[Dybek’s stories] are strikingly with-it, distinctly 21st century in their shape and method… Dybek has also always stirred understated, powerfully realized and ravishingly beautiful images almost casually into his work.

[The Start of Something is] worth leaping on.

A great deal of the art of the short story is to do with exits and entrances… [Dybek] has a knack for getting both things right… Dybek is – and this he certainly has in common with Ishiguro – a writer doing completely his own thing.

Life in Dybek’s world is messy, and sometimes criminal, but full of heart.

Dybek has an uncommon knack for both the short story and the poem. This collection mostly plumbs his American youth, producing mesmeric stories in which enchanting details leap off every page.

Crafted, well-made stories that give permanence to those fleeting moments that define lives.

[These stories] explore the fraying psychologies of their protagonists by way of dark humor and understated tragedy. In the excellent, surreal title story, the fissures in a childless couple's marriage become unbridgeable divides after their close friends fail to attend a dinner party... [they] contain moments of sharp levity and intense insight, reminders of the heights the author can achieve when he is able to sustain his immense talent

One of the most anticipated books of 2017... the Dinner Party explores an array of emotions from a deeply human perspective.

Ferris is an incisive observer, and his descriptions of even the most quotidian situations are elegant and fresh

Ferris finesses the line between tragedy and comedy, and his sly wit often surfaces in sarcastic, offbeat ways . . . The Dinner Party provides a fine showcase for his work

This season's standout short-story collections are masterful exercises in brevity, proving that sometimes less really is more.... Novelist Joshua Ferris returns with his first, highly anticipated story collection. Each entry showcases his customary wit and understanding

[With] flashes of transcendence ... Ferris's specialist area is modern American crassness

Ferris' characters may be flawed, but his writing is flawless

Each of these stories is a well-crafted, tightly wound piece of short fiction that often springs with a delightful, sometimes moving precision

Ferris wittily skewers both middle-class social life, and its would-be dissenters. He has a brilliantly sharp eye for the manners and mores of 21st-century metropolitan society, and is a master of discomfort. . . Like F Scott Fitzgerald before him, Joshua Ferris shines an unforgiving light on the jittery pursuit of happiness, and 'the growing anxiety of never arriving at what was always just out of reach'

At turns arresting and hilarious. Ferris excavates relationships, interactions, missteps, and misunderstandings to form a collection of work you'll want to return to again and again

Most of the characters are comparatively sane, but no less deliciously ghastly

Anxiety, self-consciousness and humiliation are the default inner states of the characters in these 11 stories

Moyes is always good on male/female relationships. But her sneaky brilliance is in the way she discreetly includes the powerful influence that women have on each other's love lives

Hanks can write the hell out of typing, and his dialogue is excellent, too…While these stories have the all-American sweetness, humour, and heart we associate with his screen roles, Hanks writes like a writer, not a movie star.

Funny and moving, with a wide spectrum of subjects, this is an engaging collection.

Uncommon Type is actually, much like its author, a warm, gently funny and mostly engaging collection of seventeen stories

It’s brilliant … A beautiful collection of short stories.

They’re all beautifully written and full of heart.

An entertaining collection.

Pretty impressive.

Sensitive, often witty and sometimes melancholic reflections.

Unveil[s] the inventive mind behind his regular-guy façade.

Perfect for book lovers and cinephiles alike.

A pretty damn good writer.

Full of Hanks' winning charm.

Hanks’ measured storytelling makes the collection an addictive read.

Startlingly good… A spellbinding easygoing read, it is hard to find any fault, other than that Hanks is annoyingly talented and yet still somehow remains impossible to dislike.

Startlingly good … each of these 17 stories leap out from the page in their authenticity and whimsicality … A spellbindingly easygoing read, it is hard to find fault.

A wonderful collection.

Warm, gently funny and mostly engaging.

Behind the collection is a warmth and humanity.

Unexpectedly brilliant.

A spellbindingly easygoing read, it is hard to find fault.

Rich range of subject matter and emotions.