‘‘Greyhound People’’ has been referred to as one of Adams’s most popular short stories, as well as the best story in the 2002 collection, The Stories of Alice Adams. ‘‘Greyhound People’’ appeared in Adams’s sixth collection, which speaks for itself in terms of how many short stories she wrote in her lifetime. Most critics agree that the short story form was Adams’s strong point; they often compare her style of writing to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flannery O’Connor, and Katherine Mansfield—all great storytellers.

In his article for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Frank called Adams ‘‘a writer who has a natural, almost innate gentility, an ease of being with language, character, landscape, atmosphere and emotion that is both authentic and modest.’’ Another critic who highly praised Adams was Ann H. Fisher, writing for the Library Journal, who described Adams as a ‘‘master fiction writer,’’ one who creates ‘‘multidimensional’’ characters. Besides such critical praise, another marker of Adams’s ability to write very good short prose was how often her stories appeared in the New Yorker, the ultimate goal of most contemporary authors. Adams’s editor at the New Yorker, Fran Kiernan, told the New York Times critic Peter Applebome, that ‘‘No one wrote better about the tangled relations of men and women or about the enduring romance of friendship.’’ Kiernan then added: ‘‘As a writer, she [Adams] was unfailingly wise.’’

In her review of Adams’s 1999 short story collection, Rita D. Jacobs, writing for World Literature Today described Adams in this way: ‘‘There are certain writers whose short stories exemplify the kind of perfection that theorists and critics extol. Alice Adams’s stories frequently achieve the deftly limned but fully realized character, the complication quickly described, and the denouement which offers insight or a catch in the throat.’’ Her writing is filled with insights, Jacobs continued, an observation that other critics have also made. Furthermore, in drawing her conclusion about Adams’s work, Jacobs stated that not only did she find Adams’s short stories ‘‘affecting,’’ she also described them as ‘‘models of the art.’’

Another reviewer, Beth E. Andersen, writing for the Library Journal, was saddened by the announcement of Adams’s death in 1999. Andersen, in her critique of The Stories of Alice Adams re- flected not only on Adams’s death but also on the author’s ability to write. After Adams’s death, Andersen wrote, ‘‘her gift for creating the familiar landscapes of interior life with pitch-perfect diction was forever silenced.’’

And finally, in a review of Adams’s last short story collection, a Publishers Weekly writer predicted that The Stories of Alice Adams, which was published posthumously, would be well received by all—those who have read her before and those who will read her for the first time—because of ‘‘the seemingly offhand openings that carry the reader deep into the story, the swift characterizations, the effortless shifts in point of view and, of course, the almost casual but dazzling sentences.’’