"Murphy's stories are like an acting class in which the reader is required to put him- or herself in a variety of situations or take on a variety of characters and imagine each in their full humanity. You get a lot of help from a great teacher, a thoughtful, adventurous acting coach. Ranging from the fantastic and apocalyptic to the familiar and local, the stories quickly capture the recklessness of the present moment. Murphy skillfully evokes the tension between the celebration of individualism and the impossibility of collective agreement. Though there are passages in which the show becomes transparent and the humble man working the knobs and levers is visible, this is most often a collection of funny and sinister stories with a refreshing assuredness. Recommended." Library Journal, Oct. 1994
"Murphy's characters often find themselves fighting to make sense of a world full of unexpected mishaps. Life goes sour all too frequently, whether for an elderly widower who falls in love with an obese woman doomed by a brain tumor or a man trapped during a post-modern Second Coming. The author shows occasional great promise and even brilliance, particularly when he goes inside the minds of a murderer as in his poignant disquisition into the mind of a young man who kills his obsessive girl-friend in self-defense and must come to terms with how the world has changed as a result; or in his story about another murderer who struggles to usurp his older brother's girlfriend and place in the world after killing him." Publishers Weekly, Oct. 3, 1994
