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.