SOURCE: Tandon, Bharat. “Dressed for Success in the South.” Times Literary Supplement (20 October 1995): 23.

In the following review, Tandon argues that although The Age of Miracles is not Gilchrist's best collection of short stories, it includes “moments of more profound and graceful achievement than she has shown before.”

Ellen Gilchrist, as readers of her stories will have noticed, has a gift for moving meticulously around the textures and ramifications of an event; and while her novels are always entertaining, this is a gift which lends itself more naturally to the short story, a form where epiphany is distilled and compressed. The Age of Miracles is a welcome return to Gilchrist's Southern landscapes and charmingly fallible characters.

Fables depend on a sense of ritual and expectation, and although only “Madison at 69th” openly calls itself “A Fable”, Gilchrist's talent for noticing the shapes of habit in everyday life runs deep...