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While there's some nice wordplay here ("lowjinks," for example, more prankish and sinister than "hijinks") the bulk of these stories bored me. "Bed And Breakfast" had some nice moments before devolving into a catalogue of doilies and basketry. I cringed each time a new piece of furniture was discovered. "Master of Secret Revenges" at least brings some humor to the table, but the annoying inconsistency of the narrator character made the first-person style a fail.

The most successful for me by a mile, "Emma Enters a Sentence of Elizabeth Bishop’s," overlong and deadly dull in places though it may be, had an intensity and drama to it that reminded me of Munro, but without Munro's crisp distillation of ideas and emotions that leaves you reeling.

I don't think I'll read another by Gass. Even his fun with puns and alliteration tends to go in one ear and out the other -- or whatever the reading equivalent of that may be. (In one eye and out the other?)