Sentimental Exorcisms

An English lit undergrad abandons his essays in favour of a rigorous study of other people's sex lives, conducted with a ladder and a keen eye for open curtains; the return of a former lover saps a retired librarian's faith in punctuation; the glories of market analysis prove as deceptive as human connection after Trevor Spate's visit to a stripper goes horribly awry. Then there's poor Tim Pine, gentle lover of stamps, whose more modest need - to use only his home toilet bowl - lands him in a humiliating office misadventure.
Sentimental Exorcisms is a collection of tragicomic satire, latter-day Victorian collisions of Nabokov and Proust. The men in these stories have grand designs and petty fears, or else modest designs and grand fears - with their ramparts crumbling around them, each mounts an exuberant defence in a vacuum of self-absorption.