SOURCE: A review of Lovers & Cohorts, in Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 4, 1986, p. 3.

In the following mixed review, Pesetsky comments that while the stories in Lovers & Cohorts exhibit considerable craftsmanship, they are lacking necessary elements that would make them memorable.

“Marriage can be fun, the conservative marriage counselor said. He was perhaps the last marriage counselor in California who counseled marriage.” And he was wrong—at least for the couple in the life-in-miniature in Herbert Gold's story “Stages.” Indeed, marriage gets short shrift in many of the stories in Gold's new collection [Lovers & Cohorts].

Gold has scooped up 27 stories written over a 40-year span for Lovers & Cohorts. Some are new, others collected in three earlier volumes—Love and Like, The Magic Will, and A Walk on the West Side. In his introduction to the collection, Gold willingly tells us what he writes about. “Love,” says the author...