SOURCE: A review of Later the Same Day, in World Literature Today, Vol. 60, No. 2, Spring, 1986, pp. 310-11.

In the following review, Jacobs offers a positive assessment of Later the Same Day.

With narrative skill and sharp characterizations, Grace Paley deftly details the phenomena of our everyday lives. Each of the seventeen stories in Later the Same Day leaves the reader with a sense of wonder at the varieties and complementarities of human motivation and action. Her style varies with character and tale, but there are constants in her stories. Old friends, aging, and the varieties of love are portrayed and examined. Who can deny observations such as this one from “Friends,” a story about a group in which one member is dying of cancer? “People do want to be young and beautiful. When they meet in the street, male or female, if they’re getting older they look...