This is my first Englander and I am impressed. He demonstrates great range in these eight stories, from the blazing to the subtle, the good and the bad. Where he's best is hitting the solid middle gray stuff - where you don't know who to root for, whether the actor is in the right or the wrong, whether you like the person for what he's trying to do or if he's necessarily good or if he's just interesting.

WWTAWWTAAF is one of the books to hold up as a reason we ought to read at all. Englander presents multiple perspectives that are foreign to my own, but does so in such a humanizing way as to broaden my own. The characters occupy a space and are formed by experiences that necessarily lead to a response I could not have expected from myself. I put the book down feeling like I understood the world and its characters just a little bit better.

[I hope we get to type WWTAWWTAAF a lot over the coming year.]