“One of America’s great literary treasures, Harrison delivers not one but two works: ‘The Land of Unlikeness,’ in which a washed-up sixty-year-old academic returns to his Michigan home for renewal, and [‘The River Swimmer’], in which an Upper Peninsula farm boy sees ghostly creatures in the waters of the nearby lake. Magic realism à la Harrison?”

“Mr.
Harrison’s new book, The River Swimmer . . . contains some of the
best writing of his career…He is among the most
indelible American novelists of the last hundred years…If The River Swimmer is any indication, he remains at the height of his powers.”

“The
two novellas that constitute Harrison’s fine new collection are, as usual,
quite different in scope and content… each striking in their own ways, rich and
satisfying.”

“Though
these two novellas feel slight in comparison with the best of the prolific
author’s novels, the ways in which they complement and contrast with each other
attest to his range…Everyday epiphanies from a major author.”

“Fans (and others) will delight in the two novellas here, which effectively bookend human life…There’s not a misstep in these thoughtful, beautifully crafted stories. Highly recommended.”

“Trenchant and visionary…Harrison is a writer of the body, which he
celebrates as the ordinary, essential, and wondrous instrument by which
we measure the world. Without it, there is no philosophy. And with it,
of course, philosophy can be a rocky test…I could feel Jim
Harrison grinning…in his glorious novella The River Swimmer.”

“You can’t escape your true nature, Jim Harrison’s two new novellas
assert…Here, he’s achieved a mood that approximates in modern
terms the tranquility of Shakespeare’s late romances. The existential
uncertainties that always animate Harrison’s fiction are not so much
resolved as accepted for what they are: the basic fabric of existence,
from which we pluck as much happiness as we can.”