SOURCE: "Windy City Dreaming," in The New York Times Book Review, May 20, 1990, p. 30.

In the following review, Weber praises Dybek's The Coast of Chicago.

Stuart Dybek could flip a coin and win a bet that it would land on its edge. In his second collection of stories, he gambles (usually successfully) that the paradoxical borders and margins of life are the most interesting places to locate his fiction. Some of these 14 stories are big and rich, long enough for a leisurely pace and pleasant reiterations of themes and motifs without running the least risk of seeming overstuffed or repetitious. The other stories, interleaved, are extremely short, ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages. But these brief illuminations are no less effective, and they stand alone with a deft elegance that makes them far more than amusing little palate cleansers between courses. Crossing over to the lost...