"Russian literature has never known such a book. In Draitser's stories, America and Russia are whimsically yet inseparably intertwined. His humor is so deeply philosophical that the reader doesn't notice at times where the comedy ends and the tragedy begins."

— World Literature Today

"In fourteen short stories Draitser creates portraits of families, communities, and individuals lost in worlds beyond their understanding. There are [also] psychological sketches as brief, lyrical and melancholy as Chekhov's.... In the most upbeat story in the collection, "Wedding in Brighton Beach," the narrative seethes and surges, mimicking the lavish, uproarious Russian-Jewish émigré weddings its narrator describes…. A valuable contribution to contemporary Russian émigré literature and will be of interest to students and scholars of this literary period, as well as to fans of beautifully wrought contemporary short fiction."

— Slavic and East European Journal

"His stories often have a mysterious figure, such as the boy "Immersed in the melancholy of childhood" in "Islands"; or the Postman of Odessa in "The Supervisor of the Sea," who advises a Muscovite anxious about the loss of his train ticket home, that he should go to the beach and "breathe the sea air." Losing something, he tells him, "means that happiness is waiting... somewhere and has already given a sign of its coming. Draitser mixes such messages of hope with cruelties of life in his stories."

— Small Press Review

"Draitser transforms an event into a story, and his method, which he has brought to mastery, consists in taking a situation to the point of absurdity and then making this absurdity a reality... Draitser's language is precise and expansive, his storyline is meticulously designed, his colors are rich."

— Novoye Russkoye Slovo (The New Russian Word), New York