—The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
‘Perlman writes fiction with muscle … It’s provocative stuff.’
—People, Critic’s Choice
‘All of Perlman’s stories remain undeniably assured and carefully devised, and hold out nine complete and whole worlds for us to discover and contemplate.’
—San Francisco Chronicle
‘The nine tales here don’t just suggest an emerging voice, they show it well developed, stretching and flexing … marvelously realized, evocative and utterly original … Perlman continues to amaze and move.’
—The New York Post
‘The details are perfect throughout … Perlman excels at creating tension … These stories are like walking down the hallway of an old hotel and eavesdropping on sad confessions. It’s hard not to be moved … These stories are love letters, really, and their protagonist, we come to learn, is none other than the human heart.’
—The Washington Post
‘Fans of Perlman’s grapplings with both the minutiae and the sweeping ‘big questions’ of modern life won’t be disappointed … As a writer, Perlman’s obsession is with epic yet individual moments of truth when everything—from marriage to career to a person’s innate sense of right and wrong—seems up for grabs. Ambiguous indeed, but never less than compulsively readable.’
—Elle
‘The nine stories serve as a varied introduction to an accomplished stylist and storyteller … Presents satisfying rewards for the discerning reader.’
—The Seattle Times
‘Impressive … Evident in all of these stories are the writer’s talent and ambition … Perlman shows he has the skills to fully manifest the ambitions, ideas, perspectives and plots for the stories he wants to tell.’
—The Miami Herald
‘Perlman has a winner with this collection of nine eloquent short stories that examine the various natures of the human condition via a cast of remarkable characters.’
—The Sacramento Bee
‘Perlman mines pure narrative gold … insistently readable … provocative and powerful fiction from one of the best new writers on the international scene.’
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
‘Coldly luminous … dead-on … Perlman in full: mystery, tight dialogue, layers of irony.’
—Publishers Weekly
‘Readers intrigued by Perlman’s well-received Seven Types of Ambiguity will be delighted that he has upped the ante with nine stories whose characters range from lawyers to immigrants … This story collection showcases the talent of young, Australian-born Perlman … expansively written with admirable control and generous detail, this is an excellent collection and is highly recommended for fiction collections.’
—Library Journal
‘Perlman’s voices draw you in and hold you … The order of the stories makes Reasons a sort of literary sample tray, a gradual introduction to the full breadth of Perlman’s talents. ‘A Tale in Two Cities’ [the final story in the collection] is almost worth the price of the book by itself.’
—The Boston Globe
‘Hopelessly conscious of embarrassing personal truths – the sort we realize, then yearn to forget – Perlman’s characters are erudite specialists of anomie. Hyperliterate and brutally funny, alternatively self-assured and self-loathing, they are mostly noble and deserving of our sympathy, even if we’re implicated in our schadenfreude. The effect might be depressing if Perlman didn’t show such care in imbuing his characters with devious charm … Scant evidence exists to suggest that casual flirtation with Perlman’s fiction will not end in total obsession.’
—The Believer
Praise for
Three Dollars
‘Remarkably well-written … funny, moving, and constantly surprising … It is impossible not to care what happens to Eddie, Tanya his wife, and Abby, their adorable daughter … Perlman is echoing Auden’s cry, “We must love one another or die.’ ”
—Time Out (UK)
‘Constructed like a catchy pop song … a quirky cautionary tale that feels like a wake-up call …’
—The New York Times Book Review
‘Perlman moves deftly from the personal to the political, from intellectual debate to near farce to edgy tenderness. His novel gradually builds into a study of a whole generation, a sad, angry, disconcertingly funny reflection of the way we live now.’
—The Times Literary Supplement (UK)
‘Funny and dramatic, literary yet accessible … what a find this is!’
—Marie Claire (Australia)
‘[The novel’s] blend of self-deprecating wit, caustic social comment, spirited sensitivity and big heart carries the narrative in beautifully controlled passages that brim with insight, humor and feeling … Rich with the pleasures and pains of love, family, friendship and marriage … Perlman’s sheer storytelling virtuosity gives this essentially domestic tale the narrative drive of a thriller and the unforgettable radiance of a novel that accurately reflects essential human values.’
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
‘Perlman is a marvellous storyteller.’
—Observer (UK)
‘Few novels ever dare to fuse emotional and economic life with the passionate intelligence of this one.’
—The Independent (UK)
‘The intensely appealing hero of Perlman’s debut novel is one of those troubled souls … hopelessly crushed by corporate imperatives and the all consuming arguments that develop whenever we choose to live with another person … Perlman employs both humor and compassion for all of his characters and captures the pain of inevitable adulthood with such startling accuracy that it brings tears to the eyes.’
—Book Magazine (US)
‘Elliot Perlman’s new novel is priceless … With admirable subtlety, Perlman satirizes a world in which suburban paradise and homelessness are just a single missed payment apart.’
—The Christian Science Monitor (US)
‘A brilliant fictional commentary on the human consequences of economic rationalism. Verdict: Encore! Bravo! More please!’
—Sunday Herald Sun
‘You’d laugh out loud if it wasn’t for the lump in your throat.’
—The Adelaide Advertiser
‘A compelling story, a great drama, even a great tragedy.’
— The Sunday Age
‘Its anger and its passion mark the arrival of a writer of genuine ability.’
— The Sydney Morning Herald
‘It’s such an enormous relief to discover Elliot Perlman’s Three Dollars, a novel that is unequivocally about our times.’
— The Age, Book of the Year
‘One of the year’s biggest literary finds.’
—Australian Bookseller & Publisher
‘The compassion and pertinence of Eddie Harnovey’s voice make this novel exceptional in the present Australian literary scene.’
—Australian Book Review
‘Perlman’s critique of the culture of greed is considerably composed and rewardingly memorable.’
—The Weekend Australian
‘Elliot Perlman writes about the importance of money in everyday lives with the kind of calculating desperation we haven’t seen since the novels of Henry James.’
—The Australian Way
Elliot Perlman’s Three Dollars won the Age Book of the Year Award, the Betty Trask Award (UK), the Fellowship of Australian Writers Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize (UK) as well as the Miles Franklin Literary Award. He co-wrote the screenplay for the film of Three Dollars, which received the Australian Film Critics Circle Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as well as the AFI Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. His collection of stories, The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming, won the Steele Rudd Award for Best Australian Short Story Collection, and was a national bestseller in the US, where it was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Seven Types
of Ambiguity was a national bestseller in France and in the US, where it was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year. In Australia it was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award as well as for the Queensland Premier’s Award for Fiction.
Elliot Perlman is the recipient of the Queensland Premier’s Award for Advancing Public Debate and has been described by the Times Literary Supplement as ‘Australia’s outstanding social novelist’, by Le Nouvel Observateur (France) as the ‘Zola d’Australie’ and by Lire (France) as ‘the classic of tomorrow’, one of the ‘50 most important writers in the world’.
The Street Sweeper is his most recent novel.
Elliot Perlman, The Street Sweeper
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