"His best work so far. . . . Comparable to the best of Malamud and Singer." --Kansas City Star

"Captivating. . . . Ha Jin captures a new, growing slice of America. . . . The storyteller's art is richly on display here. Ha Jin has a singular talent for snaring a reader. His premises are gripping, his emotional bedrock hard and true." --The Washington Post

"Engaging, . . . . Funny and tender at the same time. . . . The stories in this collection deal with what all good stories deal with: love, death, freedom and hope." --The Dallas Morning News

"Quiet, careful, restrained prose--prose whose absence of flourish can, at times, make it all the more eloquent." --The New York Times Book Review

"Skillful and deeply felt. . . . The collection as a whole celebrate[s] immigrant resilience: the courage to embrace calamity, hit the pavement and keep walking toward a brighter future." --The Los Angeles Times

"Ha Jin's masterful storytelling persists--meticulous, droll, convincing, populated with memorable characters--not to mention the indelible portrait of an immigrant life he gives us." --San Francisco Chronicle

"[Jin] writes with warmth and humor about what it means to be a bewildered stranger in a strange land, no matter where one is born." --People Magazine

"Engrossing, visceral. . . . All [stories] come across with the straightforward declarative immediacy of a videotaped interview or testimonial. . . . [An] illuminating, well-integrated collection." --The Christian Science Monitor

"[A] fine collection. . . . Jin is a master of the straightforward line . . . . [and] a significant American writer. . . . As in Chekhov's late work, his writing covers a lot of ground quickly." --The New Republic

"A collection of sublime moments. . . . With moments of stark insight. . . . A message worth hearing." --The Denver Post

"Every story . . . offer[s] evocative snapshots of the lives of contemporary first-generation Chinese immigrants. . . . [They] will take up quiet residence in your consciousness, shining a light into lives that too often go unseen." --The Boston Globe

"Ha Jin continues his intimate, up-close look at Chinese immigrant life. . . . All [are] artfully turned out in Jin's quietly seismic style." --Elle

"Included are the rich imagery, attention to detail, and wry humor that are Jin's stock in trade and that, when taken together, offer--as fellow writer Francine Prose has noted--'a compelling exploration of the . . . terrain that is the human heart.'" --Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star

"Jin's carefully constructed worlds offer the reader so much pleasure." --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"[Jin's] unvarnished prose adds a no-nonsense charm to the stories. . . . He just leans on simple phrasing that could come out of Sherwood Anderson or Ernest Hemingway. . . . Jin's approach is the more honest one, and the one more likely to endure." --Chicago Sun-Times

"Ha Jin's new book of stories rises way above the ordinary or merely good. . . . The embarrassments and jokes and adulteries and frustrations of these characters in their little prosaic spaces convey the sense of how each human being is like and unlike all others." --New York Post

"This may be Ha Jin's best work yet, his stories often ascending to the mystical penumbra we expect of singer, Malamud, or O'Connor. . . . Ha Jin is equally good as a novelist and a short story writer. . . . Stories still allow him to get to the heart of the matter in a more piercing manner." --The Huffington Post

"Jin writes with a twinkle in his eye." --Cleveland Plain Dealer

"The understated clashes of culture [in A Good Fall] reveal careful thematic design and provide an almost 360-degree view of this select human experience: The concerns of people everywhere trying to make a better life come alive, one deceptively simple story at a time." --The Miami Herald

"[Jin's] work is shot through with a sense of isolation, melancholy and sacrifice: what it means--and costs--to be different. . . . There is a seriousness present. . . . And there is occasional humor or at least irony." --The Seattle Times