The characters in these four expansive stories are a departure from the blue-collar denizens that populate so many of Richard Russo’s novels; and all are bound together by parallel moments of reckoning with their pasts. In ‘Horseman,’ a young professor confronts an undergraduate plagiarist - as well as her own regrets. In ‘Intervention,’ a realtor facing a serious medical prognosis finds himself in his late father’s shadow. ‘Voice’ gives us a semiretired academic who is conned by his estranged brother into joining a group tour of the Venice Biennale. And ‘Milton and Marcus’ takes us into a lapsed novelist’s attempt to rekindle his screenwriting career - a career that depends wholly, at a crucial moment, on two Hollywood icons (one living, one dead).

Shot through with Russo’s inimitable humour, wisdom and surprise, Trajectory is the work of a masterful writer continuing to discover new heights.