SOURCE: A review of Fast Lanes, in London Review of Books, Vol. 9, No. 17, October 1, 1987, pp. 23–4.

In the following excerpt, Someif lauds the stories in Fast Lanes, saying, “… Jayne Anne Phillips moves with assurance and charm.”

Fast Lanes inspired in me the same sort of feeling that I imagine Iran must have aroused in Diane Johnson. This is a foreign land, a land where people have names like Danner, Thurman and Kato, where, in the normal course of things, they take mescaline and coke, share houses with TM instructors and have lovers who have dropped out of Harvard Law School to become carpenters. And yet, is it so strange after all? It's still a land where men get lost at sea, where women talk to their unborn babies, where brothers and sisters love each other as only brothers and sisters can and where people are, on the whole, out...