In Adultery and Other Diversions , Tim Parks seeks, as he puts it, to “dramatize the intimate relation between reflections that are timeless and the ongoing story of our lives.” He succeeds magnificently. Whether his focus is adultery, marriage, his relationship with his father, ghosts, his children, Italian soccer mania, or his work as a renowned writer and translator, Parks writes with astonishing clarity and intensity. He is one of a handful of writers who can capture the drama of our lives—erratic pulse and all—and offer a perspective by which that drama might be illuminated. Intimate, absorbing, unsparing but always compassionate, the thirteen “diversions” in Adultery and Other Diversions —three of which have appeared in The New Yorker —reflect the vagaries of the human heart and a brilliant writer’s engagement with them.