Critics’ Reviews

“Stuart Ross writes with the gleefully overstimulated satirical imagination of a George Saunders or Mark Leyner, with lobe-rattlingly smart language and storylines that are culture-crazed, funny and full of strange betrayals and sociopolitical intrigue. The many comic absurdities feel inspired by global catastrophe as they cleave hypocrisy down to the ridiculous individual.” — Lee Henderson

“Hank Williams haunts the stories in Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, but Randy Newman is the book’s presiding spirit. Like Newman, Stuart Ross delivers wit with a bitter bite. Somehow, his melancholy is humorous; his misanthropy, humane; his absurdity, believable. With deadpan style and Tin Pan Alley timing, Ross has given us a hilarious, harrowing book.” — Derek McCormack