While two lovers tussle with the foibles of twenty-first century romance, a rotund academic finds a reason to give up the fifth meal of the day, another patient is seen by the fruitiest practitioner on Throgmorton Street, Sisyphean tasks of repentance are performed among the discarded fruit boxes at the back of a market, love wields a jealous knife in a Turkish corner shop and a comatose writer becomes a most productive patient. Seven stories in a honey stew of comedy and tragedy designed to expand the compassion muscles of any reader.