COMPARATIVE WORK: Nicole Flattery's Show Them a Good Time, the work of George Saunders, Sally Rooney's Normal People, Naoise Dolan's Exciting Times, Maggie O'Farrell's I Am I Am I Am, Anne Enright's Mak- ing Babies and The Actress, Ian Sansom's Diaries, Sheila Heti's On Motherhood, Carys Davies' short stories

"A few years ago my husband recommended me for a job in his company, and I thought it would be fun, and so a woman named Rosaleen would ring me for a chat. Rosaleen was a senior director in the firm, and these were scheduled chats, but I was always unprepared, running from a room, looking for a pen, or out in the rain, pushing the baby in the pram. Rosaleen had a terse and serious manner that unwound into listless expectation when my turn came to speak. I would say something and she would wait for me to say something better. Rosaleen savoured a pause. The line burned with a shared misgiving even as Rosaleen made me an astounding offer ..." 'Old Romantics' is an acutely observed and hideously entertaining collection of linked short stories from an astonishing new talent. Slippery, flawed and acute, Maggie Armstrong's narrator navigates a world of awkward expectation and latent hostility.