Across 15 stories, questions of identity, deception, and artistic expression intertwine, revealing characters who blur the line between perception and reality. In the titular story, a man and woman seemingly meet for the first time and agree to lie to each other, although the depth of their deceptions runs much deeper than it first appears. “A Day at the National People’s Museum” follows Mr. Rubens as he’s summoned for compulsory “Museum Service” in a Kafkaesque nightmare world where the people have decided to live with “no opera, no theatre, no art.” In “Waste Disposal,” a man disposes of a biscuit tin containing the ashes of his wife’s stepmother. A professor of art history attempts to combine academia and eroticism in “Pleasure Pain.” In “Patient Zero,” a painter, suddenly obsessed with what it means to be dead, goes to see a doctor. A screenwriter who has purported himself as a loner now wishes to extricate himself from this fabricated identity by acting in his latest project in “The Right Part,” although his costar faces backlash and violent threats. “Dylan” finds a frequent traveler who discovers his wife is having an affair, and in “The Scream,” a writer finds a poem he doesn’t remember creating and wonders if perhaps his wife is its true author. The final tale, “Rooms,” follows an underperforming writer with “a thing about Kafka,” traveling with his actor boyfriend to Berlin.
These stories, ranging from just three pages in length to more than 40, vary in scope and impact, with some, such as “Waste Disposal” and “An Incident,” presenting intriguing premises that ultimately feel underdeveloped. A notable thread throughout the collection is the prevalence of artists whose creative impulses shape both the narratives and their explorations of beauty and ugliness—a theme that’s pointedly tied to their relationships with others. As one character reflects, “Beauty…has little to do with appearance, or rhythm, or sound. It has little to do with external reality. It is a psychic state; a form of melancholia. And when two people converse in it, it becomes transcendental.” In “A Bowl of Fruit” and “A Clear Conscience,” the juxtaposition is especially striking as acts of cruelty or betrayal coexist with moments of profound insight or aesthetic clarity. The first and longest story, “Imagining More,” features many plot twists and repeated scenes from different perspectives, which can make it difficult to follow, yet this complexity mirrors the fractured, multilayered perception of reality that the collection often evokes. Cacoyannis’ repeated references to Franz Kafka reinforce this sense of surrealism, situating readers in worlds where the familiar is incrementally distorted. The prose throughout is often lyrical and philosophical, reinforcing the thematic preoccupation with capturing fleeting, almost ineffable aspects of existence. The focus on art and perception ties together disparate stories, suggesting that the act of creation mirrors the human effort to find meaning and beauty in the nuances and entanglements of life.
