SOURCE: "No One's Willing to Die for Love," in The New York Times Book Review, May 8, 1994, p. 9.

Moore is an American short story writer, novelist, educator, and critic. In the review below, she remarks favorably on the stories in Without a Hero but laments Boyle's inability to go beyond sarcasm.

Readers of T. Coraghessan Boyle's amazing stories are probably most familiar with the salacious Lassie in "Heart of a Champion," the Bruce Springsteen song run amok in "Greasy Lake" or the updated Gogol of "Overcoat II." Mr. Boyle situates his fictional ideas at the center of an available culture and then bursts forth with strange, engaging narratives that neither deconstruct nor reconstruct but perhaps, skeptically and inventively, disconstruct. His dreamed-up reconfigurations seem nocturnal, pouched, alternatively formed and conceived—like animal life in Australia or a half-mad cousin from Dubuque.

In Without a Hero, Mr. Boyle's fourth collection...