As in her poetry, so now in Extended Similes Jenny Joseph shows the influence on human lives of the mechanical workings of the world, illuminating many human states, especially love. Writing of Jenny Joseph's poetry, Sabine Coelsch-Foisner described the ‘mosaic mode’ she uses to draw ‘emotional, philosophical, reflective, lyrical, meditative, dialogic, descriptive and provocative tones into a rich impressionistic tableau’. This could also describe the prose of Extended Similes.

"This multi-layered book of prose fiction shows the influence on human lives of the mechanical workings of the world, illuminating many human states, especially love. Like a fly against a window-pane, Joseph batters at the limits of what it is possible to say." - Times Literary Supplement

"Jenny Joseph writes poems full of mist and reason, poems strange in what they say but plain in the way they say it, poems rooted in an English tradition of passionate but quiet exactness…careful craftsmanship, an honest exploration of the human heart, and statement after statement that nags at the memory." - The Times