SOURCE: Review of Fabulous Small Jews, by Joseph Epstein. Publishers Weekly 250, no. 25 (23 June 2003): 46.

In the following review, the anonymous critic offers a favorable assessment of Fabulous Small Jews.

Switching gears after his nonfiction hit, Snobbery, Epstein has compiled a collection of short stories [Fabulous Small Jews] as thoughtful and arresting as its title (from a poem by Karl Shapiro). Whether they are in a nursing home, recovering from the loss of a spouse of 50 years, or looking back at marriages, shortcomings or missed opportunities, Epstein's characters are quirky, witty, resentful, fearful and cautiously hopeful as they face their future, or whatever they have left of it, in a world in which all the rules have changed. What distinguishes them as Jews in this universal situation is a certain wry outlook, a vernacular turn of phrase that carries the tang of its Yiddish origin, and a tendency to philosophize...