Short story collections are the literary equivalent of canapés, tapas and mezze in the world of gastronomy: Delightful assortments of tasty morsels to whet the reader’s appetite.

It’s no good to want to win still more when you have already won.

Our thoughts, feelings and whereabouts: Food we dish up on plates called photographs and status updates; to feed Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.; beasts with insatiable appetites.

The incarnation took all that properly belongs to our humanity and delivered it back to us, redeemed. All of our inclinations and appetites and capacities and yearnings are purified and gathered up and glorified by...

Was it a form of madness, no longer to be able to trust your sense of things? To be betrayed by decisions apparently arrived at carefully and through reason, but really no more than marauding...