The book's eight stories are written with both a literary writer's care and a film writer's instinct for courting his readers or viewers. He hooks them, reels them in and does his best to make them happy to be in the boat with him -- until he lets them go a few hours later *
USA Today *
American men are Benioff's terrain. On his home turf he's briliant. Benioff's gaunt but never scrawny prose is perfect for these stories. This style, a pared-down realism enlivened by the occasional fantastic flourish, acts as an elegant summation of the author's apparently complex relationship with fiction. * David Annand,
Literary Review *
The latest master of the zippy, punchy, knee-to-the-groin story is David Benioff. His first collection, When the Nines Roll Over, follows his superb debut novel . . . Benioff illuminates the lost horizons and desperation of a population pre-occupied with gain, much as Jay McInerney did two decades ago . . .Benioff has nailed his nation like a pin struck though a Red Admiral, showcasing a dazzling but dead thing: a land that's all jacket and no book. The opposite, in fact, of this wonderful collection. * Christian House, Independent on Sunday *
Deliciously accessible stories . . . will hook you fast, and they'll keep you hooked * Kirkus Reviews *
All [the stories] are highly charged portraits of young men on the cusp of something momentous, be it their first war or their first love affair. Benioff is particularly good at using the compressed lives of lonely individuals to convey something of an incomprehensible world beyond. The best story, 'The Barefoot Girl in Clover, is also the simplest...Its potent atomospher of lost adolescence lingers like heat on tarmac. * Claire Allfree, Metro *
Benioff has taken the world and cut it into hard, bright diamonds. These stories are luminous * Ann Patchett *
'This is a superb collection, and it proves that Benioff can handle the long and the short of the fiction game' * Publishers Weekly *
If its high notes can be sustained throughout a second novel, David Benioff could have a success on his hands * Sunday Herald *
'A deft stylist who's a notch or two tamer than Chuck Palahniuk and T. C. Boyle, Benioff finds levity amidst the gravity in a world where the simplest of moments can change the course of our lives' * Booklist *
Mad stuff but brilliantly pulled off * Jem *
The latest master of the zippy, punchy, knee-to-the-groin story is David Benioff . . . Wonderful collection * Independent on Sunday *
Benioff is particularly good at using the compressed lives of lonely individuals to convey something of an incomprehensible world beyond. * Metro *
'Over the course of these eight tales, Benioff, author of the critically-acclaimed novel The 25th Hour, demonstrates a cool mastery of the short story genre. ...
In his slick prose, which resonates with humour and compassion and jumps from stark reality to offbeat surrealism, Benioff shows how single moments can transform a life. Gripping'
*
Heat Magazine *
'A deeply satisfying collection of unusual, resonant and beautifully composed stories. David Benioff is one of the most promising writers of his generation' * George Pelecanos on When the Nines Roll Over *