Binocular Vision

[Pearlman's stories are] meticulously made, miraculously precise, and so fully populated that you marvel one mind could invent so many distinct human beings from scratch. -- Sam Leith * Financial Times *
One of the great discoveries of the decade was the Jewish American Pearlman, who had been writing for four decades before this collection gave her the acclaim she thoroughly deserved * Sunday Times, Books of the Decade *
This book is a spectacular literary revelation... With Binocular Vision a new fictional planet, richly populated and suffused with warm lucidity, comes into view.' -- Peter Kemp * The Sunday Times *
An unsung master -- Megan Walsh * The Times *
Her writing is intelligent, perceptive, funny, and quite beautiful... Maybe from now on everyone will know of Edith Pearlman. -- Roxana Robinson * New York Times Book Review *
Among the best-kept secrets in US short fiction for decades... Make up for lost time now and catch up with Pearlman. -- Ben Felsenburg * Metro *
Gold medal class ... seems beyond compare ... The traditional literary system has worked, though grievously slowly, in giving a genius of the short story her due. -- Mark Lawson * Guardian *
The equal of Updike or Munro... This book will make your summer shine. -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *
These are stories to linger over. * Daily Mail *
The literary discovery of 2013... lucid, witty, devastating... a masterclass on how to deliver literature's bittersweet blow in simply a few pages * Sunday Telegraph *
No devotee of the short-story form will be unfamiliar with this quietly gifted American artist... She has written more great stories than one writer could expect, even during a 40-year career. Unfair? Life's like that -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
Edith Pearlman is the best short story writer in the world. A lot of people know that. More will -- Susan Hill * The Times *
There remain a few dedicated practitioners of the short story, and Edith Pearlman is one to be cherished * Wall Street Journal *
Edith Pearlman is a new literary It girl... a fortifying pleasure to read * Financial Times *
One of America's great modern short-story writers * Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award Finalist *
Pearlman's stories themselves offer a subtle optical training, showing us people in all their funniness and frailty... and teaching us to understand what we see * Times Literary Supplement *
Precise and exquisite... a book of wonder * Jewish Quarterly *
Pearlman peels back the surface of the conventional and reveals the more complicated emotions underneath... Of all the remarkable things about Binocular Vision, this may be the most compelling, that it enacts a worldview in thirty-four precise and subtle movements, reminding us that if connection is elusive, there is nobility in perseverance, and that we are almost always greater than the sum of our parts * Los Angeles Times *
These stories are note-perfect... By gathering some earlier pieces along with her newest work, this volume shows an artist who has never stopped developing * Boston Globe *
What makes Pearlman so good? Like Didion, she's a master of the spare sentence, of the restrained emotion... But where Didion's detachment can feel ruthless, Pearlman's is largely compassionate, sometimes even faintly amused. It is the detachment of a good psychologist or a favorite aunt, the kind whose home you want to visit again and again * Washington Post *
Edith Pearlman's stories will be national treasures * Wilmington Star-News *
Give this wonderful collection to fans of such classic short story writers as Andre Dubus and Alice Munro and novelists like Nicole Krauss. They will thank you * Booklist, starred review *
Rare is the collection that rewards many divings; rarer still when all of the work, whether early or new, is confident in its artistry, when the hours spent reading escape notice in the way only complete absorption allows... No schmaltz, no judgment, no tugging at the heartstrings, just a steady gaze and a gradual widening of the focus as Pearlman lets readers in on something wonderful and searing that had been there all along * The Rumpus *