SOURCE: Prose, Francine. “Fiction in Review.” Yale Review 81, no. 3 (July 1993): 122-33.

In the following excerpt, Prose commends the range and quality of the pieces in Collected Stories.

I assume I am not the only writer who frequently has had the experience of being asked, “What fiction do you read? What writers do you like?” and finding myself unable to remember a single title or name. It seems like a simple question, certainly to those who ask it—the eager students, the beginning writers, the reporters from local papers who beam at you, awaiting a reply, looking (you hope) for reading suggestions and not for gossipy ways to stir up trouble with the writer-friends whom you will inevitably forget to include on the list. But such troubles never arise, because the question functions rather like the unstoppering of a drain: you watch helplessly as your whole library spirals in...