Varieties of Disturbance is Lydia Davis's fourth collection of short stories.

[1] The 57 short stories therein include ones published in a number of literary magazines, compilations, and pamphlets as well as new work, and range in length from several pages to couplet-length.

[2] Siddhartha Deb, writing for The New York Times, called the book "Haunting, dreamlike and yet indisputably real" and praised her exacting use of language in the style of European postmodernism.

[3] Michael Miller also praised the collection for The Believer, admiring Davis' humor and precise writing style.

[4] Asali Solomon, with Paste, called the collection's short stories "addictively powerful, rapid encounters with tragedy, humor and existential confusion in the span of a page or a line.