Like Wharton, Acampora seems to understand fiction as a kind of elegant design . There is a barbed honesty to the stories that brushes up against Acampora's lovely prose to interesting effect. Often a single sentence twists sinuously, charged with positive and negative electricity - New York Times Book Review, on The Wonder Garden Dark and brilliant . Lauren Acampora is a terrific writer - Joseph O Neil, author of Netherland and The Dog, on The Wonder GardenThe world depicted in Lauren Acampora's stories seems reassuringly familiar, until it becomes unaccountably strange and unsettling . One moment we seem to be in Cheever's Westchester, the next we plunge through the looking glass into realms that may remind some readers of George Saunders or Robert Coover or the David Lynch of Blue Velvet, though, inevitably, all resemblances prove to be superficial. Acampora is an original - Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City, on The Wonder GardenW itty, intelligent , deeply compassionate and gorgeously crafted. Lauren Acampora is uncannily skilled at chronicling the emotional lives of her characters with the same razor-sharp precision as she does the suburban landscape that surrounds them. I can't stop thinking about these stories' - Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans, on The Wonder Garden.