A collection of short fiction - I picked it up from a secondhand discount bin at some point last year, or the year before. Can't remember why any more; possibly something had leapt out at me from whichever page I'd happened to open it up to. Anyway, it seems to be a volume from a periodical of some sort put out by Faber & Faber (1997); I'd never got around to reading it before now.
I don't really know anything about any of the writers represented, although I have a feeling that I've heard Elliot Perlman's name recently (possibly there's been a film adapatation of one of his books?). Four of his stories are included, and they're quite good - terse and adept in drawing out the sadness of the everyday (it didn't surprise me to learn from the biographical notes that he's a lawyer - he writes like one), and about people trying to get by. Art Corriveau's, haunted by death, are in a similar vein, and are probably my favourites in the book. As to the others, Keith Ridgway is represented by a single, rather Winton-esque novella-length piece, "Horses" (okay but not brilliant), and there are four Hannah Crow stories which I have a feeling might be quite good but don't have the stomach to tackle just now (jumpy, fragmented, semi-stream of consciousness, long paragraphs, etc).
