These fifteen stories range in time from contemporary Australia to sixties Britain, in location from Morocco's Atlas Mountains to France. In the title story, a woman sits each day at the bedside of her comatose former lover as he clings to life, her only consolation in the long hours of watching and waiting are the novels of Leo Tolstoy, and food. In 'Beloved Man', a lonely and socially inept bachelor living in the outer suburbs of Sydney seeks...