I hadn't come across Norman Rush before, but he's written 3 previous novels, one of which, Mating, won the National Book Award in 1992. He was born in 1933, but has published only 3 novels and a short story collection since he started writing in the 1970s. He's quite an introspective writer, not an awful lot happens in this novel, which in a way reminded me of the film The Big Chill - a group of somewhat estranged college friends gather for the funeral of one of their number, and the book gently asks questions about why we make the friends we do, and looks at how relationships change over time. There's a touch of Jonathan Franzen here in his acute social observation, but this book has a narrower focus, it's less grandiose. The writing is beautiful, and subtle, as the title suggests, and is at times funny, romantic and surprising.