'Brilliant. I was constantly astonished.

Each story takes us into a new world, yet the collection is bound together by a belief in the power of adaptability.'

'These are some of the best stories I've read this year – possibly ever. Lennan writes magnificently about men on the edge and women with secrets.

These are world class stories, tales that feel so palpable, true and lived, they almost feel like an act of possession.'

'Aesop was a slave who freed himself (it is said) through the gift of storytelling – and, like his fables, these stories are chiefly interested in power.

The fable’s clarified settings – a well, a tree, a trap – find their equivalents in the settings of the global city.'

‘A treatise on the grittiness – the disappointments, the injustices, as well as the joys – of everyday life...

Lennan is a master at creating worlds’

‘I devoured these stories...

Each is a whole new world of experience and meaning, and to read them together is to fall utterly under Lennan’s spell as a master storyteller.’

'The range of these stunning stories is global, universal. They are set in Tokyo, the Spanish coastline, Oxford, Hong Kong, London, Wollongong. The characters are also diverse: filmmakers, scientists, and students; actors, surfers, and escapees from cults...

I was quickly seduced after the first few.'