'High Noon at Starbucks is an eloquent and compelling exploration of human particularity in diverse cultural settings: the author's hometown of Melbourne, Trumpite Florida, post-handover Hong Kong, and Switzerland. Its themes include mid-life experience, identity, mental and physical illness, gender, colonialism, and the Holocaust. Whether comic, tragic, or tragicomic, these stories are pervasively concerned with the complexities of the moral life. Their historical reach includes imaginative encounters with classics of nineteenth century fiction. Sophisticated but accessible, High Noon at Starbucks reminds us that fictional realism remains very much a going concern.' (Publication summary)
