If the ghosts of Woody Allen and David Mamet were available (at the early date) to float through the fiction of one writer, that writer would have to be Stan Rogal. In linked short stories imbued with wry humour, brutally frank honesty and caustically banal dialogue, women and men argue, make love and taunt each other mercilessly. Reading Rogal's stories is like acting on this women's proposition: so easy and so enjoyable. But like the world of theatre Rogal invokes in many of his stories, where it is sometimes hard to tell whether people are really good actors, or if they are actually feeling what they are telling you, these stories suspend your disbelief so effortlessly that you put the book down and marvel at the seduction that has been 'performed'.