'These stories show how your fate is twisted by choices you make. In one tale, a woman realises how carefully she ignored signs of her lover’s deceit, and the pages of another woman’s diary show how much abuse she accepted before taking a final, violent revenge. One woman delights in the character quirk that made her a dedicated thief while another, the victim of childhood abuse, struggles to reclaim her sexual self. An adult son contemplates the boyhood bargain he made with a crab, to save his mother’s life, and a forty-year-old learns that freedom to choose means making a difficult decision. But individuals do not live in isolation, and their destiny is also shaped by their place in a shared world. The writer describes the stages of her personal experience in the light of popular songs she enjoyed with her contemporaries, and as she remembers a visit to Rome, she contemplates the various phases of the city’s brutal but fascinating history. And after the upheaval of 2016, she wonders how the character of one man will affect the fate of the world.' (Publication summary)
