Before I got this little volume, Robert Coover was an author of whom I knew absolutely nothing at all. Turns out he's an American professor at Browns, now in his 70s, and Wikipedia told me he's considered a fabulist and an author of metafiction. New takes on fairy tales I adore, and I'm very fond of Paul Auster's metafiction - so I was looking forward to the three short stories here too (all taken from his 1969 collection Pricksongs & Descants) .

The title story tells a tale of what happens in a circus freak show when the Thin Man wants to put on a little muscle to impress the Fat Lady who is going on a diet for him. A rather sad fairy tale.

The last tale in this trio, A Pedestrian Accident, is narrated by a man who has been run over by a lorry. He lies dying while weird people argue around him - or maybe in his pain he's hallucinating. Nasty actually, and contains several moments of pure comedy which will make you wish you hadn't laughed!

It is the second story in this set which is a masterpiece though - The Babysitter. A teenager arrives to babysit for Dolly and Harry Tucker who are going out to a party, leaving her to get two tricky youngsters bathed and off to bed and deal with a hungry, pooey baby. The Dad fancies the girl. She's wondering whether to invite her boyfriend Jack over once the kids have gone to bed, what to watch on the telly and whether to have a bath too or not. Her boyfriend's mate Mark is trying to persuade Jack to let him soften her up for him, they should both go over to the Tuckers' house. This story is all about sex - more particularly thinking about it. They all fantasize about the girl, and as they all work themselves up, their fantasies all become more and more outrageous, paralleled by the girl imagining increasingly outlandish stories about the children until you're not quite sure what is real and what isn't. Proper metafiction - absolutely brilliant!

Having now investigated Coover a little, I'm dying to read his novel Gerald's Party (1986) in which a drunken party carries on around the corpse of a dead actress - Cocktails, sex, and violence. Sounds slightly like a louder American version of Mike Leigh's wonderful Abigail's Party (BBC) [1977] [DVD], of which Channel 4's reviewer said: "Abigail's Party still ranks as the most painful hundred minutes in British comedy-drama." 'Little top-up anyone?' ( )