The descriptions are intimate, sympathetic; their lives are sharply drawn.

A young Muslim woman moves to a Dublin street; a married man meets a married woman to make up for a failed night of their youth; a friend keeps a window open to remind herself that suicide is available.

Through each story we see the narrator more clearly: the tension between who he is and the pull of what might have been. Conclusions happen, opposites meet. In Mint, time is the great character.