A prize - winning and innovative collection of connected short stories. ''You could look back after a long time and ask, who wanted what from whom?'' A man confronts death after an operation, a devout Christian encounters a man who hurt her long ago, a secretary uncovers her boss's secret shame. And in a house in Auckland an elderly woman is writing the last book of her life, one which, she says, contains all of her crimes. How are the characters connected and who is writing the stories? Each of these astute stories is an inspection of motive, rich in vivid insight into a diverse range of lives. Together, they form a unified whole. Opportunity is a book about storytelling, about generosity and opportunism; above all it is a celebration of the subtleties of human impulses, of what Katherine Mansfield called the LIFE of life.