Eleven powerful stories insinuate themselves into the imagination. In 'Sub-Aqua', a middle-aged woman discovers a kind of freedom from the tragedy of her mute husband, a former tube-train driver silenced by the horror of a 'leaper' under his train. Language and communication, or the lack of it, is the underlying theme of many of the stories, nowhere more powerfully expressed than in the story 'Big Mouth', in which an IRA informer - fatally incapable of keeping his mouth shut - suffers the ultimate penalty.