Vital Signs brings together the collected novellas by a modern master of the form, a writer who Alice Munro has said "often comes as close to the baffling comedy of human experience as a writer can get." Elegant, wry, compassionate, and mischievous, with echoes of Kingsley Amis, Evelyn Waugh, and Muriel Spark, John Metcalf's Vital Signs will bump the funny bone and pierce the heart.