In the American writer’s wry, understated second short story collection, the past comes back to jolt her largely middle-aged characters

Curtis Sittenfeld is irresistibly drawn to the awkward: to the geeks, and to those who are not quite as attractive, confident, rich or successful as the peers with whom, often to everyone’s surprise, they find themselves sharing space and time. Her readers, one suspects, feel a strong pull of identification with these less accomplished and veneered characters, not least because Sittenfeld allows us to believe there are significant compensations on this side of the social balance sheet. She took that optimistic outlook to its limits in her last novel, Romantic Comedy, in which a dating-averse backroom TV writer finds love with a front-page celebrity.

Sittenfeld might also have titled this collection of a dozen short stories The Hare and the Tortoise, although it is not always entirely clear that slow and steady does win the race. Many of her protagonists, who are often also narrating their own stories, find themselves in middle age, in domestic and familial circumstances of varying contentedness and stability; and whatever their feelings towards husband, wife, children or job, they are inclined towards looking back, perhaps to stave off the less certain prospect of looking forward.