“[Doyle has] a facility for creating characters out of thin air and making them stick. Not to mention the sly humor, the ability to hew to the fine line between pathos and bathos and write unsentimentally about sad people and situations, and the gift for quicksilver dialogue that can sound like a poetic form of vernacular speech . . . When you put these together with Doyle’s broad range [...] you’re left feeling close to dazzled . . . he imparts a sense of poignancy and glimpses of happiness, of grief and loss and small moments of connection.” —Daphne Merkin, The New York Times Book Review

“Doyle’s brilliance probably shines brightest in life with children—which may give added poignancy to these lives from which children are missing, lost or launched. But Doyle’s other extravagant gift, a way with speech, does have its moments here, often in significant exchanges recalled but more generally in the conversational knack of the narration.” —The Washington Post

“Doyle’s accomplished collection probes the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on a series of marriages . . . A master of dialogue—whether strained, deceptive, or free-flowing—Doyle has a keen eye for the interconnectedness and the criticality of communication, which makes these stories shimmer. Doyle’s raw portrayal of living and loving under lockdown has a deep resonance.” —Publishers Weekly