'Kennedy is a superb writer and the canniness of her observation keeps you reading' Sunday Times

Humour, fantasy, rage and despair both help and hinder the protagonists of these stories as they navigate changing circumstances, accumulating losses, moments of comprehension and tenderness. Here is the woman, hoping for a quiet day at the zoo, who finally snaps at a white man's racist tirade and vents years of fury; the micro-celebrity who practises lines for a chat show on which he'll never appear; and the woman who walks out of her honeymoon suite at midnight, perhaps for good. Unsparing in her close examination of human relationships, A. L. Kennedy proves once again why she is regarded as one of our great storytellers.

'Kennedy dissects the small intimacies of inner thoughts... Her prose is typically direct, her sentences clear-cut and yet capable of great tenderness' Observer

'An author with a proven ability to see - truly see - and whose prose can fire like gunshots across the page' New Statesman

"Quite astonishing... A masterclass in the possibilities of the short story form." - Scotsman

"AL Kennedy’s latest collection of wise, funny, human short stories came at just the right time. I...emerged feeling better about the world than I had in a while... Kennedy is brilliant at subtly shifting the ground of her stories, gently rotating your perspective so that by the end you’re facing in quite the other direction, not sure of how you got there… [There is] waspish intelligence at work here." - Observer

"Striking, expertly constructed… Kennedy’s exquisite blending of the limits of pain and courage recall Primo Levi." - Financial Times

"AL Kennedy’s seventh collection of stories is a quite astonishing…clear-eyed…masterclass in the possibilities of the short story form; comical, plangent… Words indeed for our times." - Scotsman

"Kennedy is a superb writer and the canniness of her observation keeps you reading." - Sunday Times