These stories put me in mind of Gissing and Richard Yates - who in their very different centuries and countries mercilessly exposed the threadbare materialistic dreams of the middle classes. Neither of those admirable writers was hugely popular, nor ever, in the glib sense, populist, but both were true and powerful storytellers. Dent too is a disabused social critic, moralist and analyst of human nature, someone who castigates snobbery and hypocrisy with sardonic often heart-rending honesty. Dent shares their bitter sense of humour and keen sympathy for all failures and misfits - anyone trapped by blighted relationships and thwarted ambitions.