SOURCE: A review of A Handbook for Drowning, in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 12, Spring, 1992, pp. 157-58.

Below, Olsen offers a favorable assessment of A Handbook for Drowning.

In his third book of fiction and first finely crafted collection of twenty-four short stories [A Handbook for Drowning], David Shields weaves a crazy quilt of psychologically haunting tales that explore drowning as a metaphor for obsession. Lots of people go under here, figuratively and literally, from the man who while scratching his girlfriend's back imagines penetrating right down to her vertebrae, to the university student who's unable to stop reading Prometheus Bound in preparation for a quiz.

Most of these are quiet, domestic, sadly funny pieces set fifteen or twenty years ago in suburban rooms, urban dorms, and sunny beaches in California and Rhode Island. Some, like "Father's Day," a tender account of a father and son attending...