SOURCE: Review of Don't Tell Anyone, by Frederick Busch. Publishers Weekly 247, no. 34 (21 August 2000): 44.

In the following review, the critic commends Busch for presenting moving prose and heartrending stories in Don't Tell Anyone.

Because his writing is masterly and his perceptions dazzling and true, it's exhilarating to encounter each of the 16 stories and one novella in Busch's new collection [Don't Tell Anyone]. All of them resonate with incisive observations about the burdens of love and connectedness, and the inevitability of betrayal and disillusion. In every story, the dialogue is brisk, funny and tender, sometimes improbably whip-smart but always insistently voiced. Busch's prose is restrained yet poignant, and he hooks readers with arresting opening sentences (“Did I tell you she was raped?”; “I loved his mother once”), and delivers heartbreak with closing lines (“Often, of course, there are no bells”). There are no vague, drifting conclusions here; a strong, affecting...