The tone of these stories trembles, like a barometer in a thunderstorm, between comedy and tragedy; an appropriate position, since they mostly depict relationships in various stages of faintly ludicrous disarray. And not just any relationships, but specifically second relationships - second-level, second movement, second-rate. A married man and his ex-girlfriend in "That Was Then", a man and his new girlfriend in the title story, rival males in "A Meeting, At Last", with its mantra-like opening sentence, "Morgan's lover's husband held out his hand". Kureishi's dialogue is pin-sharp, and his finely-tuned sense of the ridiculous bubbles under each of the stories, some of which ooze pain in an offhand way, as a grazed elbow or knee oozes blood, until it erupts in the blackly comic "The Penis". Plenty of style, then - but oddly substantial, into the bargain.
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