A woman and man, parted a quarter of a century, reunite in a bar in New Orleans as the St Patrick's Day parade goes by. A group of friends, all once promising, reunite for dinner when one of their number loses her husband, but the gathering splinters when bitter revelations about their shared past emerge. Two teenage boys sit in a drive-in, the air thick with the scent of gin and popcorn and longing.

A visionary collection of luminous stories, imprinting landscape, and great moments in small lives — and of the people we carry with us long after they are gone — Sorry For Your Trouble reconfirms Richard Ford as the master of contemporary American fiction.