''What We Talk About When We Talk About Love'' is Raymond Carver's most famous collection of short stories and remains one of the most influential pieces of modern literature to date. But the original, unedited manuscript, ''Beginners'' - published here for the first time, was almost fifty per cent longer than the published collection. This restored version of Carver's stories reveal what was previously unsaid, filling in the narrative silences that have both inspired and mystified readers for so long. ''Beginners'' is a fascinating insight into the aesthetic of a literary great and, in the questions it raises, may just spark off one of the great cultural debates of our times.