A magnificent collection: striking, moving, and deeply thought-provoking

Seiffert is a writer of great delicacy and toughness...good story begetting good story after good story

It is extraordinary to experience these fictions... Not even the achievement of The Dark Room, its maturity and courage, will quite prepare the reader for the subtle art at work throughout these stories

Vivid, just and heartfelt

'The Crossing' has all the leanness of Hemingway's short fiction... In Seiffert's hands, the tale becomes a tense parable set at the dangerous intersection of trust, desperation and xenophobia

Rachel Seiffer's short stories excel at depicting the awkwardness and confusions of life...and all are created with the same confidence and skill she showed in her Booker nominated novel The Dark Room

Skillfully constructed... It's rare to meet such an unwriterly writer. Especially one who does it so well

Captivating... Because Seiffert writes without judgment or sympathy, her flawed characters are all the more compelling

Whether they are Polish emigrés or hoary World War I veteran's, Seiffert's cast walks the knife's edge of history... It takes an agile mind and dexterous prose to invoke such weighty chunks of history in short fiction