As Myles points out in the book’s preface, no one is sure whether it is a novel, an essay collection or a short story collection. This, for me, is one of its strengths; it revels in its formal resistance to categorisation just as it revels in describing relationships, lifestyles and temporalities that do not quite fit. ‘Toys R Us’ dramatises much of this brilliantly and hilariously when Eileen and her girlfriend attend a child’s birthday party only to find themselves the only adults present who have arrived expecting to be fed. 

In Chelsea Girls, Black Sparrow, 1994/Serpent’s Tail, 2016