Wolves stalk the streets of Paris, and concert pianists stalk women who love women in these sensual stories by Jean McNeil. In London, a young woman constructs an imaginary romance through ads in the Once Seen columns; in Brazil, a fading writer tries to revitalize his career by tracking the journey of his more successful rival; beneath the shadow of a volcano a young woman writes of love. Set in Canada, Britain, France and Latin America, each ones of these zestful, exhilarating stories is a whole world in itself.

Jean McNeil, a native of Nova Scotia, has lived in London since 1991. She spent the austral summer of 2005-2006 in Antarctica as the British Antarctic Survey/Arts Council of England International Fellow to Antarctica, and has since been writer-in-residence in the Falkland Islands, Svalbard and on a scientific expedition to Greenland.

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"Her metaphors are insistent and arrestingly implausible; wild weird images are strewn throughout this book"

Times Literary Supplement

"This is a strong first collection of short stories... The narrative style is fragmented, shifting, the prose gravid with surreal imagery."

Irish Times

"She lures the reader into her sometimes cryptic tales with sharp descriptive language and seldom provides a tidy resolution... Armchair travellers will rejoice at the chance to cover an amazing amount of geographical ground guided by McNeil's gift for mining the sensual and philosophical challenges of travel...a collection that is not unlike travel itself: exotic, exhausting, sometimes confusing and rewarding in unforeseeable ways."

Globe and Mail

"By turns sinister and sensual, heartfelt and anguished, these haunting elegies to love and loss comprise a lyrical nocturne... McNeil's vignettes summon an exhilarating sense of nights spent whiling away the small hours on the bohemian wild side... The arbitrary encounters McNeil depicts leave a lasting impression of intense melancholy, as compelling as it is disturbing."

Daily Express