SOURCE: Mewshaw, Michael. “Bad Baby-sitting.” New Statesman 126, no. 4356 (17 October 1997): 55.

In the following review, Mewshaw discusses the themes of yearning, indecision, and loss in the stories of Ford's Women with Men.

In a literary climate where the sun often shines on the dimmest writers, it's heartening that Richard Ford has attracted serious critical attention. But it must baffle and frustrate him to find reviewers slapping silly labels on his work, confusing his fiction with autobiography and forcing him into the company of inapposite American authors.

With the publication of Women with Men, book chat shows and magazine profiles have begun to recycle anecdotes and reinvoke names that have nothing to do with these three novellas or, for that matter, Ford's previous books. Described in Granta as a devotee of “dirty realism”, invariably characterised as a macho figure from Marlboro country, frequently linked with laconic stylists such as Hemingway or...