Happy days have their souring. In this remarkable collection of stories, Cressida Connolly explores the lives of children and young people who, in the wake of events that alter everything, find themselves split like stone. A conversation on a trip to the zoo heralds the end of the family; a boy watches his father enfold Aunt Rose in his arms and loses his vocation; in an alarming account of sibling rivalry, a young girl becomes jealous of the attention afforded her dying sister.

Each of these finely crafted stories is its own forceful and separate world where familiar emotions - love, loss, jealousy, loneliness - are dissected and shown anew. With this collection, Cressida Connolly makes an exciting and stunningly original debut.