In this splendidly diverse collection of stories, Rick Moody travels across the surface of America and lays bare the troubling loss of connection that lurks beneath. The stories are cast in many varied forms - domestic comedy, pseudo-fairytale, philosophical argument - but whatever the genre, the underlying elements linking them all together concern loss, pleasure, and the difficulty of really expressing love. What characterises them in style is an antic humour, and a vibrancy of language that is uniquely Rick Moody's own, leaving the reader with no doubt about why the New Yorker voted him one of the 'Twenty Writers for the 21st Century'.