The Gioconda Smile is a sarky revenge tale that plays like a watered-down Saki, i.e. still pretty enjoyable. Permutations Among the Nightingales: A Play is as stupid as it sounds. The Tillotson Banquet is a half-assed art-world satire that peters out into irrelevance. Green Tunnels is a moderately moving account of romantic disillusionment. Nuns at Luncheon is another piss-take of literary types that doesn't break a single inch of new ground.

Overall, not as good as the other collection of Huxley shorts I've read, Brief Candles. ( )

Huxley is a master of description and characterisation, in dialogue as well as in exposition, and he is not nice to his figures. His cast is brilliantly portrayed, and it's the clash of characters resulting in toxic relationships of outwardly utterly normal people that makes these relatively simple plots so riveting.

Also learned that script-like stories don't work well with TtS software - d'uh. ( )

https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2015/06/24/shuffling-off/ ( )