No dreamy-Hollywood shimmer, more rot under upholstery and people loving each other badly in high definition.

An alcoholic widowed actress withdraws to the desert, a young mother’s rejection of her child, a newlywed couple ignore the warnings of a painter scorched by love, and elsewhere Schutt tracks erotic fixation, familial damage, longing, spite and whips them together in these pieces that bite you back.

The pleasure here is not big plot machinery but how cleanly and unnervingly Schutt cuts into dependency, desire, and emotional distortion. Sharp, cold, often very funny in a dark way, and written with that rare precision understands domestic scenes are always faintly dangerous.

And Other Stories paperback, 2018. Very good condition, clean throughout with light shelfwear only.