The Man Who Loved Levittown

Wetherell's fertile imagination brings us an array of struggling characters to laugh about, shiver over and sometimes identify with. . . . The key to Wetherell's narrative success is his masterful use of conflict. It weaves in and out of each story like a fine thread—and catches the reader from start to finish.

Nearly always, Wetherell makes us care. That's because he refuses to condescend to his characters, because he achieves a voice appropriate to the story and because he has a sures sense of plot. . . . Wetherell writes cleanly and well as though E. B. White, counseling clarity and simplicity, has been peering over his shoulder.

Original and highly entertaining. Wetherell's characters may be losers, but they're battlers, with a cranky dignity that sets them sharply apart from the spoiled whiners, quitters, and self-indulgent identity-seekers so frequently encountered in today's increasingly anemic fiction.

DiMaria's [a character from the title story] solitary battle with his new neighbors is almost epic in scope. He is one of the most forceful and realistic voices I have listened to in recent fiction; in speaking to no one in particular, he speaks to us all . . . Willy Loman with guts.