Christopher Bollas is a psychoanalyst and Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytical Studies.

'This is a very different experience than reading a realistic novel or short story, or even a realistic play. First, it's not clear what this form is – not poetry really, not plays really, not vignettes. Conversations is indeed the best description, but the author is not aiming for verisimilitude. He has cut the dialogue down; it's spare, subtextual. The closest I have read is Beckett. It's like the dialogue in Waiting for Godot.Bollas is known as a psychoanalytic theorist, but he is wearing a different hat here. He has written novels and plays before. You will be missing a lot if you try to read this as psychoanalytic. It is a different category.There are twenty-odd pieces, conversations in the book. The author is not trying to be all deep or disguised. You do get a sense of the actual person behind the pieces. Foibles and idiosyncrasies and all. That's a good thing. Some of the pieces I read through and I was curious about them, but only intellectually. Then there were 5 or 6 that when I read them sensitively, they got me on an emotional level. You get some modernist dialogue like this, and it hits you behind the eyes: it's poignant. It stays with you.'

• ContentsBrand newCan I help you?It feels good Customer relations Shopping Memories are made of this On board Reading Looking through the window The overall situation What is happening? Do I look stupid? Along came a spider The man with no worries What is it? Cyberspace On the same page Self with other Should we enter? The delay A thought searching for a thinker Being and nothingness So I went down to shop Afternote