In this collection of stories Malamud displays his great gifts as a writer - his humour, his profound concern for all human life and his ability to transmute common things and people into a strange poetry. Many of his characters are Jewish (the title story, for example, is about a rabbinical student trying to find a wife through a very peculiar marriage broker) but through his gentle and haunting exploration of their predicaments he illuminates a region that is common to every man's world.