Gaunt’s treatment of dialogue is particularly accomplished. He has a great ear for the pitch of a conversation, and is consistently able to transpose the nuances and tics of natural speech into written form. In a genre which demands brevity, his use of conversation, particularly in the first two stories, is not simply decorative but revelatory, subtly confessional.

Unfortunately, the strength of Gaunt’s storytelling is not always matched by his prose. There are, throughout, awkward formulations and mixed metaphors which imperil the effect for the reader. The ocean, for example, undulates ‘like a living thing’, and one character’s armchair and television set are referred to as ‘withered fruit of her eighty-one years’. Of course, the upside to these complaints is that they are easily righted, and I am confident that the gap between prose and story evident in this collection will be considerably shortened by the time his next batch is ready.

All in all, Prime Cuts represents forty-three minutes out of Gaunt’s waking day well spent.