"Marvelously vivid. . . . Tolstaya's vision reveals the world as a complex system of real and unreal realms . . . floodlit by flashes of transcendence."
–The New York Times Book Review "Beautiful. . . . The best of Tolstaya's stories trace [the] intersection of imagination and memory, where the two become something greater by not being merely one or the other."
–The New Yorker
"Resplendent. . . . Playful and poetic . . . Memory fuses with wonder, and wonder with worship." –
The Wall Street Journal "Grimly hilarious. . . . Divinely quotable. . . . Everything in this generous writer's hands is vivid and alive." –Joy Williams,
Bookforum "Masterful. . . . A collection of dark, funny folkloric tales." –
The Paris Review
"Call off the search for Tatyana Tolstaya's origins among the Russian greats: There's no one like her anywhere, then or now. She is a writer of breathtaking originality, boldness and importance." –Thomas McGuane, author of
Cloudbursts "Tolstaya's writing is so good that it cuts through the surface directly to the universal workings of the human heart." –
BookPage
"Praised by Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky as 'the most original, tactile, luminous voice in Russian prose, ' Tolstaya, two decades on, is all that and more in this edgy, brash, slyly surreal, and mordantly funny short story collection. . . . Tolstaya's daring, masterful stories, crisply translated, glint and whirl with extraordinary dimension and force." –
Booklist
"These uniformly masterful stories reject any attempt at easy categorization, resulting in a profound, surprising, and rich experience. . . . While the works blend fantasy and fact, often within the same story, what unites them all is Tolstaya's singular and assured voice, capable of beautiful specificity." –
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Elegant, lyrical tales woven with melancholy and world-weariness–but also with a curious optimism. A gem." –
Kirkus Reviews (starred)
