This anthology is typical of my reason for normally avoiding short stories. 16 writers have provided a story based on the theme of nostalgia, however the quality of the stories varies enormously and in some of them the retro aspect isn't that noticeably.

My favourite was Nicholas Royle's "Empty Boxes" which is about a man's obsession with old cinemas in London. I also enjoyed Joyce Carol Oate's "Strand Used Books 1956" about a chance encounter with Marilyn Monroe and Tony White’s “The Jet Set Girls” which recreates the gangster milieu of 1960s Soho. "The Death of Blonde" by Christopher Kenworthy was hugely imaginative although not specifically about a retro time period, rather about our obsession with cataloguing the past.

The weakest story was unfortunately the longest, "The Stock Exchange" and I'm unsure how it fitted the anthology's theme.

Still there were enough good stories in here to keep me reading to the end of the collection and I would recommend it to anyone interested in nostalgia and advise them to cherry pick from the stories. ( )