Cynthia Flood's complex and intricate collection of linked stories takes a deep pleasure in words and language. And the characters stay with you long after you put down the book. — "The Globe and Mail"
Flood artfully transplants the conventions of the Canadian Gothic story form and its obsession with death, isolation, madness, and natural landscape into the static, provincial milieuof the genteel British lower-middle classes enshrined in the works of V. S. Pritchett. . . . Taken together, the stories ultimately achieve a brooding resonance that captures the literal and spiritual dampness of a provincial scene that all but died out with the last remnants of the British empire. — James Grainger, "Quill & Quire "
Vancouver writer Cynthia Flood has won a slew of prizes for her fiction, and her latest book, a collection of linked short stories called The English Stories, shows why the accolades are so well deserved. Flood is a thoughtful writer whose richly dense prose opens up worlds to explore. — Candace Fertile, "The Vancouver Sun"
Women writers, most of them experts at subtexts and subversion, need language that speaks their own truth. In these 15 stories, Flood's varied and occasionally experimental narrative techniques give her scope to reveal her concerns without being didactic. . . . A distinctive voice is already audible in the best of these stories. — Patricia Maika, "Vancouver Sun"
There were many excellent collections of short fiction published in 1992. . . . For me, the most outstanding was without question Cynthia Flood's "My Father Took A Cake To France." Pungent and articulate, the stories throw ordinary situations into new relief without the relentless overtelling that less astute writers succumb to. . . . Traversing the line between frailty and strength, between desire and repression, Flood manages to capture the essence of short fiction's situational contingencies with instinctive skill. Whether she uses as her subject the blunt betrayals of the body or the delicate sea currents of emotion, Flood is a fiercely incisive and wryly comic writer. . . . — Aritha van Herk, University of Toronto Quarterly Fall 1993
In Cynthia Flood's remarkable first novel, there's no tidy shuttling between present and past, no chronological storytelling. . . . The complex narrative demands that you pay attention, and it works; like the lives of its characters, this novel is complicated, passionate, and genuine. — "Chatelaine"