Skilled portraits in miniature set in Dublin and London: masterful character sketches by one of Ireland’s most observant writers. Although these are separate stories, they form chapters in a man’s life. He knows the characters ‒ in Dublin, the West of Ireland, London, provincial England‒ and they know him. His descriptions are intimate, sympathetic but their lives are sharply drawn. A young Muslim woman moves to a Dublin Street; a married man meets a married woman to make up for a failed night of their youth; a London woman keeps a window open to remind herself that suicide is available. Through each story the overarching narrator also becomes clearer: we see the tension between who he is and the pull of what might have been. As conclusions bring opposites together, in this book, Time is the great character.