A master-class in the short storyA.L. Kennedy's new collection of stories is about our desperate need for human communication, and - equally - the desperation at our inability to communicate. Here are women and men examining the lives they were given - forensically going over the missed opportunities, wrong moves, lost chances to engage or escape. Visiting a zoo to take her mind off her grief, a woman finally snaps at a white man's racist tirade and vents a lifetime of fury, an American micro-celebrity practises lines for a chat-show on which he will never appear, a woman walks out of her honeymoon suite at midnight, perhaps for good, and, in the extraordinary 'New Mexico', the host of a live podcast describes seeing the last photographs of her mother before she was murdered. Wry, caustic and unsparing in her close examination of human relationships and their failures, A.L. Kennedy sees harder than most writers - 'Other humans are very unhappy, but try to seem glad, ' she writes. 'People do their best.' In this collection of raw, brilliant, unforgettable stories, Alison Kennedy shows - once again - why she is regarded as one of our great writers.