Each of the thirteen stories in Real Losses, Imaginary Gains has the refined and beautiful simplicity that only a master artist can achieve. Nothing is wasted. In art there is no such thing as perfection, but it is the peculiar magic of art that the fully realized work cannot be imagined as other than it is. That sleight of hand is the equivalent of perfection. These stories are magic. There is a glorious American variety of form and content here, a handbook in the ancient and persistent possibilities of short fiction.

George Garrett, "Fables and Fabliaux of Our Time: 'Real Losses, Imaginary Gains'," in The Sewanee Review (reprinted by permission of the editor; © 1977 by The University of the South), Vol. LXXXV, No. 1, Winter, 1977, p. 110.