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Outstanding
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Chicago Tribune Alan Cheuse
[A] brilliant collection.
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Stylistically varied, inventive, accessible, Lethem's stories offer a fine appetizer for fans hungry for his next big thing. [25 Oct 2004, p.28]
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Favorable
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Ken Babstock
Slim, distilled and affecting, Lethem's Men and Cartoons... brilliantly traces the lines of what we are and what we imagine ourselves to be. [13 Nov 2004, p.D4]
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
No story is less than intelligent, though the author's fans will miss the deeper explorations he makes in his longer works. [1 Aug 2004, p.708]
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Favorable
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Library Journal Tania Barnes
Lethem is undoubtedly a writer of many and great talents--not least of which the ability to make us laugh even when we're not really sure what's going on--but sometimes his stories veer too far into the esoteric and threaten to lose us. [15 Sep 2004, p.52]
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Favorable
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Los Angeles Times Mark Essig
These nine stories... constitute a Lethem FunPak, showcasing the author's mastery of tone across a remarkable range of genres. [5 Nov 2004]
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Favorable
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The Onion A.V. Club Noel Murray
Contains a little of the earnest urban angst of his recent bestseller The Fortress Of Solitude and a little of the flipped-over fantasy of his earlier work.
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Favorable
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Village Voice Chris Tamarri
Consider this a Lethem primer.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Lucy Daniel
Lethem's writerly hallucinations and metafictional devices can be too knowing and, yes, a little nerdy. But his appeal comes not just from a sense of outsidership. He is fun to read, and his unerringly genial voice preserves its authenticity across an array of genres.
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Favorable
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The Guardian Alfred Hickling
This quirky, frequently hilarious collection has all the makings of a cult classic.
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Favorable
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Booklist Ray Olson
So is Lethem forging ahead in the mainstream or crossing back to genre ground? In these nine stories, both. [1 Sep 2004, p.62]
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Mixed
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USA Today Christopher Theokas
The stories read like a literary demo tape, more a collection of ideas, experiments and exercises than stories.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Jay McInerney
In the better stories, the high-concept ideas can turn in unexpected and sometimes dangerous directions, but in the lesser ones they act only in the service of a punch line.
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Mixed
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Entertainment Weekly Mark Harris
There's more filler here than a short book should contain... but the best of these stories offer potent little distillations of Lethem's considerable imagination.
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Unfavorable
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PopMatters Zachary Houle
It's just absolutely mind-boggling to watch one of the best living authors in the world seemingly offering up half-assed apologies or would-be explanations about his past, as he does so pervasively in his most recent work.
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