Stephen and Gloria have a link that both connects them and holds them apart – it is Max, Gloria's brother and Stephen's friend and housemate. Max has just died and his sudden absence stands between them like one of Max's sculptures – ugly, awkward and impossible to ignore. Gloria, back in England from Hong Kong to attend Max's funeral, is marvellously original, prickly and difficult, a maker of frequent social misjudgements who wishes she had known Max better. Stephen is bruised by failed relationships and analyses them too acutely for his own good. Yet there is plenty of humour threaded into the angst, particularly at the excellently edgy funeral. The collision between the two main characters is a slow-motion crash, but no less painful for that. From Stephen's first glimpse of Gloria, yelling at an unseen stranger as she arrives outside his house, to the offbeat resolution, this is an engaging novel of flawed and vulnerable individuals edging towards each other, and away again, in a lobster quadrille of tentativeness.

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