Free agents or captives of our past? In Life, Bound, characters find themselves caught in situations not of their own making, or trapped by ingrained habits, walking in grooves carved out by past events.

An artist's progress is pleasingly channeled into a pattern laid down a century earlier. A solitary man's story is almost preordained, but is indecipherable to researchers looking back some sixty years later. Karma mops up in the wake of a mousy clerk. A local legend falls foul of the town gossip. Spouses are constrained or liberated by love. Sexuality, gender, resentments, attachments and perversities all play a part.

Yet the grip of the past needn't always hold firm. Many protagonists are offered a potentially life-changing moment; whether or not they grasp it is up to them.

'Marian Matta's superb stories are both uplifting and heart wrenching.' Joanna Atherfold Finn, author of Watermark

'Warm and witty stories. Marian Matta reveals her characters with razor-sharp clarity.' Lynette Washington, author of Plane Tree Drive