Not just the name of the final story in this mesmerizing collection, "England" can be read as the subject of the collection as whole: a tapestry to which each story adds a subtle and telling thread. There is the barber who says "people are life," but is glad to be through with them at the end of every day... the two young gay women who find each other working at a sperm bank... a young bride in 1918 coping with her shell-shocked husband... the twelve-year-old boy weighing his desire to be part of a gang against his sense of wrong and right... a father having his last conversation with his soldier son in Afghanistan. Here are memories of first sex and long relationships; secrets revealed and kept; faith held and belief undermine; love, friendship, and kinship begun, ended, and renewed. Open-eyed, compassionate, and eloquent, these stories give us Graham Swift at his most piercingly observant of human behavior.