Her tone is still masterfully sardonic, but, in the 16 years since her last collection of short stories, Lorrie Moore has reached an age at which she can convincingly write about disillusionment.

The characters in these eight stories are seeing the things that they've been clinging on to (often relationships) slip away and the sense of self that used to sustain them eroding. Under Moore's gaze, her characters' pretences and masks fall away. But, although the light she shines on them may sometimes be harsh, she's not trying to show flawed people at their worst so much as looking for the things that make life absurd and ironical, and to spark off a sense of identification in her readers. If these people didn't laugh, they'd cry. So they make awkward banter that's never as witty as they want it to be. Moore, though, outside of direct speech, is scalpel-sharp, sympathetic to their plights but always darkly comic.