SOURCE: A review of The Collected Stories, in World Literature Today, Vol. 69, No. 1, Winter, 1995, p. 42.

In the following review, Tompkins offers a positive assessment of The Collected Stories.

Grace Paley dedicates The Collected Stories to her “colleague in the Writing and Mother Trade,” Sybil Clariborne. In celebrating a friendship spanning over forty years, Paley chooses to remember one of the last questions raised by her friend: namely, “How are we to live our lives?” And this is the question which best encapsulates the moral dilemmas Paley addressed in The Little Disturbances of Man (1959), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974), and Later the Same Day (1985).

In addition to highlighting Paley’s development as a writer, The Collected Stories allows for an appreciation of the array of subject positions and social issues explored. Points of view range from children to retirees. Also present are the immigrant experience and the plight...