Booklist offers the following praise for "American Dreams," which appears in this collection and was originally published in the anthology of gay men's fiction, Shadows of Love: "Those who use a straightforward, non-minimal realist style succeed more than those who don't. Notable cases in point include.Alan Neff in 'American Dreams', about the love that blossoms between two mentally ill men." The story, it continues, has "the added attraction of not being about upper middle class white men-the protagonists of most big-press gay male fiction."