Tessa Hadley presents everything as fine at the front while it comes apart comprehensively at the back. The dozen short stories that comprise After the Funeral, her absorbing and thoroughly readable fourth collection, manage with a quiet dexterity the emotional situations that promote this kind of undoing.
Lynette, central character of Dido’s Lament, bumps into – or is bumped into by – Toby, her ex of many years. The collision, and what they make of it, will maintain a certain ambivalence. Who actually bumped into whom?