"Robert Olen Butler's latest volume of short stories deserves much more than the passing glance one might give the supermarket scandal sheets that are his muse. Butler, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his previous story collection A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain finds inspiration in the unlikeliest of places, a dozen tabloid headlines that in his hands become titles for first-person vignettes: 'Boy Born with Tattoo of Elvis,' 'Every Man She Kisses Dies,' 'JFK
Secretly Attends Jackie Auction,' and so on. Rather than merely capitalize on the inherent absurdity of the headlines, as one might expect, Butler generates throughout a surprisingly compelling mix of fantasy and pathos, particularly in those stories that frame the collection, 'Titanic Victim Speaks through Waterbed' and 'Titanic Survivors Found in Bermuda Triangle.' His results have the feel of improvisations by a master." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)