In ten powerful stories, Salter portrays men and women in their most intimate moments. A book dealer faces the truth about his life-as it is and never will be again-when he is visited unexpectedly by his brash former girlfriend. A lonely married woman, after a disturbing encounter with a drunken poet at a dinner party, finds herself irresistibly drawn to his animal surrogate, a huge tawny-eyed dog. A lover of poetry must come to terms with his wife's request to give up what may be his most treasured relationship. And in the title story, already hailed as 'a masterpiece, clearly and without question' a translator, tormented by an agonizing sense of inevitability, assists in his wife's suicide even as he performs a last betrayal.

A haunting symphony of desire, memory and loss from a writer whose assured style and emotional insight make him one of our most compelling and important literary voices at work today.

'Salter is a writer who particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure. He is among the very few North American writers all of whose work I want to read, whose as yet unpublished books I wait for impatiently' Susan Sontag

'Salter's prose is rare and stunning' John Irving

'James Salter is the contemporary writer most admired and envied by other writers . . . He can, when he wants, break your heart with a sentence' Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World