Assorted Fire Events

"The roll-call of honor, from Eudora Welty to John Cheever, John Updike, William Maxwell, to Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, and Annie Proulx, is long and rich. Just when it seems that things could get no better, along comes David Means."

"It is Means's signature talent to view the lives of his characters, and life itself, from somewhere just beyond, in a position of maximum understanding and honorable detachment: a semidivine vantage point for the examination of hopelessly human affairs."

"Assorted Fire Events is one of the best American collections of the last ten years. Means's stories are harrowing and funny and full-blooded, consistently satisfying in their narrative twists, and lyrical in a way that makes most contemporary literary 'lyricism' sound like greeting cards. This is food for the hungry."