The first ever collection of short stories from the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of The Friend ‘Once you discover Sigrid Nunez, you don’t look back’ ANNE ENRIGHT ‘Among the most interesting writers of our generation’ INDEPENDENT ‘Nunez gracefully leaps from big emotions, including grief, to erudite literary digressions or biting wit’ WALL STREET JOURNAL ‘One of my favourite authors’ NATALIE PORTMAN The new book from the New York Times bestselling and National Book Award winner Sigrid Nunez: her first short story collection, taking in thirteen stories from a career spanning three decades. Moving from from an inappropriate teenage crush to a therapist’s second chance at love, from the momentous to the mundane, Nunez maintains her irrepressible humour, bite, and insight, her expert balance between intimacy and universality, gravity and levity, all while entertainingly probing the philosophical questions we have come to expect from her writing, such as: How can we withstand the passage of time? Is memory the greatest fiction? ‘What’s consistent across Nunez’s books is their searching tone about the biggest of life’s questions’ WASHINGTON POST ‘Long live Sigrid Nunez’ LAURA MARLING ‘I am committed, until one of us dies, to Nunez’s novels. They are short, wise, provocative, funny’ DWIGHT GARNER, NEW YORK TIMES