Writers so consistently interested in social manners as Frederic Raphael are usually called 'class conscious'. What's special about Raphael is that he is conscious only of the middle class—in fact, only of the middle class couple. You need read no further than the opening sentences of Raphael's stories [in Sleeps Six and Other Stories] to discover that his abiding preoccupation is the coming together of the bourgeois he and she….

Raphael has gone over this ground so often now, and with such assurance, that he's begun to look self-parodying. He was always indulgent towards his creations (his satirical jabs about as vicious as syrup), and now the saccharine has crept into his much-acclaimed wit: 'Frost still made mountainous birthday cakes out of molehills in the meadows." There are good moments here in the title story and in two or three of the minimalist narratives where Raphael moves...