John Montague, best known as a poet, is also a gifted prose writer. A Ball of Fire collects all of his short stories, together with the erotic novella The Lost Notebooks (which he hoped to have banned, but which ended up winning a major literary prize). In the shorter stories, from The Road Ahead, which comments poignantly on the loss of established landmarks, to the title story, in which a series of chance encounters helps unlock a painter's creativity,...