Call them fables or allegories if you want; these dozen short works by the author of Flying Leap use both fantasy and humor to examine family, culture, and other topics.
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
These bizarre and masterfully crafted stories will thrill readers of literary fiction who hunger for an innovative American voice. [6 Dec 2004]
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Outstanding
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Entertainment Weekly Gillian Flynn
Budnitz's collection is jarring, humane, funny, and so lively it practically buzzes.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
Budnitz shows major talent in her creation of a distinctive fictional world, ambiguous and complex. [1 Dec 2004, p.1101]
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Barbara Fisher
Her stories, set in an uncanny and often uncaring world, gesture toward political discontent but resist outrage.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Sarah Coleman
Reading Budnitz's stories is like experiencing the exhilaration of flight along with the queasiness of vertigo: She can take you to new heights, but don't expect a comfortable ride.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Tom Perrotta
The collision of Budnitz's earnest political agenda with her subversive narrative imagination gives these stories their distinctive feel.
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Favorable
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Village Voice Joy Press
Budnitz's voice is comfortable and perfectly pitched, and her characters live and think in ways that feel vaguely familiar. Yet the laws of the universe are different here.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Lydia Millet
This is a collection that offers much in the way of both emotion and imagination, which dares to be magical without bothering about realism.
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Favorable
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Fiona Foster
A critique of American culture as scathing as it is mesmerizing. [16 Apr 2005, p.D36]
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Mixed
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Los Angeles Times Richard Eder
Budnitz is not after mere horror, although the weaker pieces are not much more than that. She is attempting to take the implications of our contemporary life, already suffering from distortion, and draw them to a wildly logical extreme. [20 Feb 2005, p.R12]
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