"In his latest short-story collection, A Good Fall, Jin continues his skillful and deeply felt exploration of immigrant conflicts. He focuses on a socioeconomically diverse cast of characters mostly living or working in the Queens, N.Y., neighborhood of Flushing. They include a healthcare aide trying to fend off advances from an old man with dementia without losing her job ("A Pension Plan"), a private SAT tutor embroiled in an inadvertent love triangle with his female student and her mother ("Choice") and a professor worried that a single misspelled word on his application will doom his tenure chances ("An English Professor"). A pervasive anxiety infects these lives. For these newcomers, both relationships and jobs seem precious, precarious things, often tied to one another, sometimes hanging by a thread.... China is no paradise lost, and America has its problems too. But...the collection as a whole celebrate[s] immigrant resilience: the courage to embrace calamity, hit the pavement and keep walking toward a brighter future." —The L.A. Times
