Revolving around something called love, each tale deals with a different doomed relationship. With titles like Charging, Plan and Truncheon, they all take abstract twists and turns to reach endings that are in turns dead funny, quite worrying and a bit odd.

Punch lines follow set-ups and developments for each story, like perfectly paced jokes told by a stand up with killer timing. Shipwreck's an example of this: a girlfriend drowns, and the grieving boyfriend eventually finds a new love.

Then his presumed-dead ex washes up alive on the seashore. 'I was faced with a choice,' writes Rhodes. 'My new girl won because the old one was skinny and bedraggled, and besides, the water had made her all crinkly.'

This twisted outlook - or perhaps ultimate truth - runs throughout the book. Rhodes's stories make 100 paper cuts into the cosy concept of love, leaving the heart bleeding and torn. This is a painfully funny and true work: it'll echo for anyone that's ever fallen in, or out, of love.

— Tom Morgan 07.07.00