'Funny, merciless, brilliant. I loved it' CURTIS SITTENFELD, bestselling author of ROMANTIC COMEDY Seamus, Fyodor, Ivan, Noah and Fatima are running out of time to decide on their futures. In a university town in the American Midwest, this circle of lovers and friends ask themselves: what is the right thing to stake a life on? Work, love, money, dance, poetry? Is love possible without harm? And what does true connection look like in an age of precarity? The author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Real Life returns with a deeply involving new novel of young men and women trying to work out what they want, and who they are. 'Taylor is a sharp chronicler' RAVEN LEILANI, author of LUSTER 'Assures Taylor's position as one of the most important novelists of his generation' GUARDIAN 'Remarkable' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Elegant. Taylor has a Chekhovian generosity' CLAIRE MESSUD, author of THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN.