SOURCE: Eder, Richard. “‘It Was Great, and Don't Call Me, I'll Call You.’” Los Angeles Times Book Review (25 June 1989): 3.

In the following mixed review, Eder praises Minot's skillful prose, but finds Lust and Other Stories repetitious, distant, and thematically limited.

For Susan Minot's young women, entreaty is a one-way street. Men entreat them meltingly.

They look at you seriously, their eyes at a low burn and their hands no matter what starting off shy and with such a gentle touch that the only thing you can do is take that tenderness and let yourself be swept away.

The speaker in “Lust,” the title story of this collection [Lust and Other Stories], is winding up her litany of male neediness and of all the different times it has ravaged her. For her, entreaty is irresistible. For Minot's men, on the other hand, it is unbearable.

When Meg, in the...