Imagine Jane Austen beamed up to 1990s London and plonked down in the middle of a private view at a desperately trendy art gallery. Such is the kind of wicked, wily observation Shena Mackay brings to her little band of characters: the artist's widow, Lyris, a painter in her own right; her revolting nephew Nathan, conceptual artist and chancer of a high order; a middle-aged bookseller, a beautiful feminist film-maker. In Mackay's astute hands, the private view, a byword for falsity and social shallowness, becomes the catalyst for some radical relationship rethinks, and this slim volume is marked by a refined intensity - like a short story which, happily for the reader, doesn't want to stop.
