SOURCE: Miller, Keith. “Messed-Up but Macho.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4947 (23 January 1998): 21.

In the following review, Miller praises Bear and His Daughter, asserting that Stone is a careful, polished writer who deserves to be read.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. The insight would come as no surprise to the characters in Bear and His Daughter. Their mistrust and hostility towards life is deep-rooted and pathological, but almost invariably justified by events. The seven laconic tales of betrayal, psychosis and loss collected here evoke a chilly, fragmented, unhopeful culture on the brink of collapse. Fortunately for us, they are also witty, compassionate, impeccably constructed and, for the most part, an astringent pleasure to read.

Robert Stone began writing in the late 1960s, and many of his characters are manifestly casualties of that period. Their problems are those of middle age—failure of purpose...