'Shockingly beautiful and painfully funny' ObserverA pregnant woman is stuck in a slow lift with a tactile American stranger. A naked mother changes a nappy in a hotel bedroom and waits for her husband to come back from the bar. A woman's one night stand is illuminated by dreams of a young boy on a cliff road, another's thwarted by a swarm of somnolent bees.These are stories of women stirred, bothered, or fascinated by men they cannot understand, or understand too well. Their characters are haunted by the ghosts of the lives they might have led - lit by new flames, old flames, and flames that are guttering out. These are sharp, vivid tales of loss and yearning, of surrender to responsibilities or to unexpected delight. All share the unsettling, dislocated reality, the subversive wit and awkward tenderness that have marked Anne Enright as one of our most thrillingly gifted writers.