Pictures by Goya and Other Stories

In this new collection of short stories from Vincent O'Sullivan, the characters find themselves at points of crisis - domestic, emotional, sometimes comic. These sharply observed, artful narratives test the borders of experience and imagination, confronting the assessment of memory. The characters are left to deal with recollections - variously ironic, untrustworthy, sentimental and affirming. The stories attend, in a characteristically O'Sullivan manner, to a surprisingly wide interpretation of what New Zealand lives may mean. The 'ordinary' is presented with a hard-edged compassion.