Mortal Coils is a collection of five short fictional pieces written by Aldous Huxley in 1921. 'The Gioconda Smile' is a mixture of social satire and murder story, which Huxley later adapted into a film called A Woman's Vengeance (1948). 'Permutations Among the Nightingales' is a play concerning the amorous problems encountered by various patrons of a hotel. 'The Tillotson Banquet' tells of an old ...