Often collections of stories seem to me idle gatherings of chance acquaintances, sometimes uneasy with their companions. While the random can offer pleasures of its own, it can mean narrow-minded stories offended by their wilder and noisier neighbours, together a matter of squabble and disharmony. The four long stories that comprise Michael Wilding’s new work, Under Saturn, have instead a creative discord. Each one is self-contained, yet the movement of counterpoint among the four brings to Under Saturn the unity of a single composition, a quartet of variations on a theme.