Adam Thorpe's second story collection is divided between longer tales of human foibles and shorter prose-poems that take as their starting point an image or an idea and then explore it with subtlety and grace. The subjects addressed include a timpani player's disillusionment with his wife and colleagues, a man's mixed feelings about the birth of his first child and, in the superb title story, an unexpectedly Gothic outcome to a young novelist's lunch with an editor.
Among the 15 stories here, there is only one dud, a dreary sub-Alan Hollinghurst saga about an elderly choreographer's unrequited love for a young dancer. Every other tale demonstrates vitality and wit, from the satirising of a pretentious poet in "Karaoke" ("speaking in German always made him feel better . . . one day, he would learn the language") to the painfully observed portrait of middle-class one-upmanship in "Dead Bolt".
Thorpe's prose is lucid and inventive, whether capturing the breathtaking beauty of nature or the staggering banality of everyday life. His characters - mostly decent, sympathetic people struggling against the fickleness of fate - are deftly portrayed. Full of humour and warmth, this is an impressive, at times brilliant, work.
