A Box of Matches - Tapa blanda

"Extraordinary prose" (Sunday Times)

"As Kipling was to the secrets of the jungle, so is Baker to modern domesticity, equally ready with fascinating observation" (Daily Telegraph)

"There is a good deal more everyday wonder here than in a hundred original miscellanies" (Observer)

"This might be Baker's best yet - you're in for a treat" (Evening Standard)

"Like the small, agreeable sensations it so deftly evokes, this modestly scaled story is a pleasure that can add cheer to an entire day" (Spectator)

A man gets up earlier and earlier each day, dresses in the dark, makes his coffee and lights the fire with a box of matches. Then he rummages through the thoughts that crowd his head and preoccupy him. Here is mid-life domesticated man, whose thoughts veer brilliantly from love and marriage, to firelighters and suicide, in the twinkling of an eye.

This is Baker at his best, humorous and observant, revealing the underlying truths about the ephemerality of life, the joy of small things, the darkness just the other side of everyday life - all human life in a box of matches.