Perry “could take a straight line of dialogue and bend it to your will, resulting in something so entirely original and unexpectedly funny it still astonishes,” Schwimmer wrote.

What astonishes here is the ease with which he emotionally opens himself up to Juliet, only to realize too late that the options available to this couple are running out.

Matt Wolf, reviewing that production for The New York Times, said that Keen “astonishes throughout.”

“I’d like to do something with them like the canvases of the sunflowers because it astonishes me that no one has done them as I see them.”

If the unexpected always happens in Everett’s individual novels, the variety across the work also astonishes.