Munro is a great realist, and her powers come from her sense of the way in which communities – especially small, socially anxious, limited ones – construct and guard their reality.
James Wood
London Review of Books
One of the most esteemed writers in the world... Few writers capture the moral ambiguities, murkiness, messiness - and joy - of relationships with as much empathy and grace as Munro... An outstanding showcase for Munro's scrupulous, humane, unnervingly perceptive vision
Guardian
Her work is practically perfect. Any writer has to gawk when reading her because her work is very subtle and precise
Jane Smiley The best short story writer alive... Munro can pack more into one of her stories - more subtlety, more grace, more tender twists of the human heart - than many novelists do in a lifetime's oeuvre
Independent
One of the world's best living short-story writers... To say that she has made the short story her own and reinvigorated it somehow falls short - she has reinvented it
Observer
Alice Munro! Now that's writing
Margaret Atwood That Munro is a great writer of short stories should go without saying. She is also one of the two or three best writers of fiction (of any length) now alive
Sunday Times
This superb collection...confirms Munro's place as the laureate of thwarted passion - and quite possibly the greatest short-story writer at work today
Daily Telegraph