Skilled portraits in miniature set in Dublin and London: masterful character sketches by one of Ireland’s most observant writers. Although these are separate stories, they form chapters in a man’s life. He knows the characters ‒ in Dublin, the West of Ireland, London, provincial England‒ and they know him. His descriptions are intimate, sympathetic but their lives are sharply drawn. A young Muslim woman moves to a Dublin Street; a married man meets a married woman to make up for a failed night of their youth; a London woman keeps a window open to remind herself that suicide is available. Through each story the overarching narrator also becomes clearer: we see the tension between who he is and the pull of what might have been. As conclusions bring opposites together, in this book, Time is the great character. 

These are timeless, classic Irish short stories in the vein of William Trevor and Brian Friel, poised and carefully observed vignettes of the lives that compose modern Ireland.