Seventeen of the stories in [Problems and Other Stories] first appeared in The New Yorker, and they have upon them the white, bloodless thumbmark of that publication. They do not bleed or cry, they do not hurt us in the chest or the throat; they are, instead, the work of a fine craftsman in cool, classic stone. Simple, directly written, they are pleasantly wry and often intelligently ironic. The plots are thin, clear, almost translucent….

In such tales as "Here Come the Maples," "Domestic Life in America," and "Separating," the pain is so refracted that it becomes self-depreciating, wry, and touching only in a carefully controlled way.

In perhaps the finest of these stories, "Separating," we watch the husband, Richard, break into tears at the dinner table; we see the curious reaction of his young son, John, to the news of his parents' separation—he eats a cigarette...