Sometimes one story is worth buying a whole book for. This is one of those times

Any new book by Lorrie Moore is a cause for rejoicing, but her first collection of short stories for 16 years demands bunting, revelry and tap-dancing. She is one of a handful or two of writers (I’d nominate Anne Tyler, William Trevor, Martin Amis, Kazuo Ishiguro among the rest) whose work is always worth buying. With lesser authors a tepid review might discourage purchase, but Lorrie Moore can fall foul of critics yet still be immensely entertaining.

So it is with Bark. The book begins with an absolutely marvellous long story, ‘Debarking’, in which almost every paragraph contains a fresh delight, something so funny and so true that the reader must exclaim aloud. Moore’s terrain is familiar to all who relish American realist fiction: families and their discontents, marriages and their disappointments. Here a newly divorced man called Ira (a character not unlike that portrayed by Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm) takes tentative first steps into the world of middle-aged dating.