SOURCE: A review of The Consolation of Nature and Other Stories, in The New York Times, January 13, 1988, p. C20.

In the following review, Kakutani gives a favorable assessment of The Consolation of Nature, concluding that Martin's best work in the short story genre is Gothic in nature and rivals the work of Edgar Allan Poe.

In one of the stories in Valerie Martin's new collection [The Consolation of Nature and Other Stories], a couple put their ailing pet snakes into wooden crates in the back seat of their car, in order to take them to see the vet. The car suddenly spins off the road, and when the police arrive on the scene, they find the boxes have been smashed. While lying in the hospital, recovering, Eva is told the snakes have disappeared, and, "as she lay beneath the onslaught of another shot of morphine, became convinced that...