Tim Weed's Reviews > Table for Two

Such an enjoyable fiction collection! This is a book to learn from and appreciate. Reading it will enrich your life, which is something one can only say about the best literature. Amor Towles is a masterful storyteller. The writing is clear and unassuming and each of the narratives is dramatic, well-paced, and solidly built. Towles doesn't rely on cheap effects and there is so much quiet wisdom in these stories. The best thing about them is the characters, however: sympathetic, plausible, complex people whom the author presents fairly and without judgement, and whom, by the end of each story, you really feel you've come to know. Short fiction is such a difficult art to pull off, like the most delicate and technically difficult of magical tricks. It really has to come alive on the page, and it has to both disrupt and reestablish equilibrium in the span of a very limited number of pages. The fact that Towles performs it again and again in this volume is evidence (together with his fantastic novels) that he's well on his way to becoming an American fiction writer for the ages. Highly recommended!