Three intertwined stories. In "So Late in the Day," Cathal faces a long weekend as his mind agitates over a woman with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently; in "The Long and Painful Death" a writer's arrival at the seaside home of Heinrich Böll for a two-week writing residency is disrupted by an academic who imposes his criticisms and opinions; and in "Antarctica" a married woman travels out of town to see what it's like to sleep with another man and ends up in the grip of a possessive stranger. Each story probes the dynamics that corrupt what could be between women and men: a lack of generosity, the weight of expectation, the looming threat of violence.

So late in the day --The long and painful death -- Antarctica.