Sam Riviere follows up his state-of-the-nation collection 81 Austerities with an elliptical amuse-bouche served up with no blurb, biographical note or anything else by way of authorial explanation. The text, too, is much like being at a party where you know no one and no one bothers with introductions. A woman called Kimberly is weighing a marble egg while harpsichord music plays, Veronique fiddles with a remote control, and Bathsheba complicates the shadows of a fern.