'It was our third time playing the Godfather theme since lunch...' In a sublime short story collection, Kazuo Ishiguro explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the 'hush-hush floor' of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, the characters we encounter range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning. Gentle, intimate and witty, this quintet is marked by a haunting theme: the struggle to keep alive a sense of life's romance, even as one gets older, relationships flounder and youthful hopes recede. If you enjoyed Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, you might also like Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, now available in Faber Modern Classics.