SOURCE: "Striking Snapshots of a Drowning Family," in Newsday, January 20, 1992.

In the following favorable review of A Handbook for Drowning, Cryer asserts that "Shields's strength lies in setting up ironic play between expectations and reality," which results in "tautly constructed, tautly observant stories."

Readers of David Shields' book of interrelated stories, A Handbook for Drowning, may wonder why the author chose not to work his material into a novel. After all, the story of Walt Jaffe's coming-of-age in California during the '50s and '60s has all the makings of an intriguing novel—initiation into sex and manhood, parents forever on the brink of divorce, making peace with the age of flower power.

Yet freed from the conventional novel's linear progression, Shields has the latitude not to flesh out a character's background or fill in plot lines or aim toward an identifiable climax. The short-story format permits...