Library Journal
This is a dazzling collection, in themes and style a masterly addition to the author's oeuvre. Oates is again concerned with men and women caught up in complex, destructive, adulterous relationships, as exemplified by the stories ``Ancient Airs, Voices,'' and ``Double Solitaire.'' ``Surf City,'' ``Golden Gloves,'' and ``Raven's Wing'' depict the lives of working class men who suffer the irony of luck meted out in insignificant doses. The brutish, shocking worlds of ``Little Wife'' and ``Testimony'' are in stark contrast to the elegance of ``Nairobi,'' in which every spare detail implies an insubstantial truth. ``Little Blood-Button'' is a needling, repellent gem of a monologue. Oates expertly draws in the reader to bear witness to a wide range of richly experienced and realized lives. A searing, faultless performance. Mary Soete, San Diego P.L., Cal.