When I first picked up the short story collection Sunstroke, I was eager to read it.  According to the Guardian quote on the dust jacket, Tessa Hadley was “a rare and startling gem” whose writing was apparently “fantastically subtle, absorbing and insightful.” 

Fifteen months into a three month holiday, money was a distant memory. Not so distant were the pleas of various financial institutions, including my parents, urging me to come home or somehow work off some of my substantial debt. Such words fell on deaf ears; I was enjoying my sprawling holiday too much.

"You are an attractive, intelligent, confident businesswomen," Betty Suarez reassures herself, with endearing desperation, as she begins her first day at "fashion bible" Mode Magazine. But "attractive" is the last word her new co-workers would use to describe hapless Betty.

This week in asking the wrong questions to the lead-singer of a moderately famous Americana band who are big in California and Germany.  Joey Burns from Calexico gets annoyed at your reporter’s questions, but still answers them pleasantly...