How It Ended by Jay McInerney

Ending of the emotional and matrimonial kind are the starting-point of the stories in McInerney's stylish new collection. Locked in relationships rumbling with discontent and melancholy, McInerney's sophisticates – bankers, lawyers and senators – seek solace in the arms of "creamy cupcakes" and recreational drugs before putting a call in to Donald Prout, New York's hottest matrimonial lawyer. Not a gloomy read, McInerney prose glints brightest and funniest when his characters are caught in the full glare of paranoiac meltdown.