It is always a pleasure reading Boyd, and this short story collection serves as a reminder of his dexterity, as much in this format as in the longer form. Boyd writes with humour and mordancy, returning to certain themes that have appeared elsewhere in his work too: the overlap of the novel with film and cinema, the legacy of the War, and the counterfactual of living (having lived) a different life. Inevitably, in a collection spanning a dozen or so pieces, some were stronger than others. I particularly enjoyed ‘Adult Video’ (the opener), ‘A Haunting’, and ‘The Mind/Body Problem’. Equally, ‘Beneath Berlin and A to Z’ was a superb exercise in literary showmanship, with each of the 26 sections beginning with a subsequent letter homophonically similar across the first prior and first new section words. Eight out of ten.
By William Boyd