Ending could easily have been a dreadful book. Instead, it is an extraordinarily good one. Each of its 40 short chapters contains a quiet surprise or nuance that is all the more effective because it springs from the most familiar sources…. [Wolitzer] practices realism at its best. Her novel is not a direct imprint of close personal experience. It is an imaginative act that contemplates the world without the lachrymose bitterness that made an anxious Hemingway demean life by calling death an old whore. (p. 78)

R. Z. Sheppard, "'Liebestod' in Rego Park," in Time (reprinted by permission from Time, The Weekly Newsmagazine; copyright Time Inc. 1974), Vol. 104, No. 9, August 26, 1974, pp. 76-8.