The Lemon Table

All [the stories] are a joy to read as Barnes glides between forms...Each story is distinct and indelible, a tribute to the form. Above all they make you think about growing old and what, if anything, can be done about it.

Glasgow Herald

All have a photographic clarity, a psychological realism that embraces extremes of feeling...with a deliciously wry streak

Observer

Barnes's steely wit finds best expression when inhabiting the anguished and angry... Their brilliance rather plays upon our petty furies and failures, embellishing them with self-deprecatory wryness...entrancing and curiously cheering

New Statesman

Masterly...his best stories have a strong air of Maupassant about them...extraordinarily effective...a compelling series of vignettes of old age, executed with great skill

Daily Telegraph

Splendid, beautiful...reads like Turgenev

Spectator

Admirably unsweetened by saccharine sentimentality...exhilaratingly crisp, crystallised by Barnes's wintry intelligence... The clean, acidic accuracy of Barnes's writing is supremely enjoyable

Sunday Telegraph

Taken together, these tales present a powerful account of the snatched joys and encumbrances of decrepitude in well-turned prose that brings wit, charm and gravity to its theme

Financial Times