"What is the quality of whimsy?" as Myles na Gopaleen might have asked in an updated version of his Catechism of Cliché. "Gentle." But in Dan Rhodes, "gentle" is the wrong modifier. He trades in sour whimsy, or bleak whimsy, or sometimes savage whimsy.

Marry Me returns us to the territory Rhodes pitched a tent on in his first published book, Anthropology: here are 80-odd short stories about marriage, none longer than a pocket-sized page and a half. Rhodes's gift is to sketch a situation deadpan, and to imply the world it arises from. Taken individually, many of them could be the script for a gag cartoon or a bit in a standup routine, but in aggregate, they build up to a worldview: quirky, jaded, and yet strangely tender. They provoke a curdled eye-boggle of recognition, a yelp of laughter, a groan (some of the jokes are of that kind) or  the best of them  a sense of restrained but accepting melancholy.

Each is told from a man's point of view, and very few of them can be read as advertisements for the state of matrimony. It crossed my mind to keep running totals of the divorces, separations, adulteries, sexual humiliations, maimings, deaths and thwarted hopes that these tiny stories compass, but a numerical account would make the book sound more like EastEnders. The (strictly) extra-literary consideration that Rhodes's author photograph shows him getting married, and that the dedicatee is "wife-features", is a pointer to the romantic sensibility that underlies the cynical tenor of the stories.

The things themselves are slight  the odd one's just a squib. But most of them contain or imply a great deal. "Judge", for instance, captures the habitual intimacy of couples who don't like each other (or one of whom doesn't like the other). The protagonist contests his divorce and the judge bursts out laughing: "Do you seriously think I'm going to make her stay married to you?" "My now ex-wife gave me one of her I told you so looks, and as usual I had no choice but to concede that she had been right all along."

A handful of the male protagonists here behave with splendid callousness, such as the man who dumps his fiancee while she's recovering in hospital from being mauled by a tiger. "She accused me of jilting her because she had lost her looks. Luckily, I had foreseen this possibility, and brought Demetrio along to back me up." After recovering from her initial shock, through her bandages, the tender-hearted ex-fiancee asks him to reassure her that they hadn't killed the tiger.

"They had killed it, though  they'd shot it through the face with a giant gun. Demetrio provided her with a speculative re-enactment of its final moments, and she fell into a fresh wave of sobs. Dealing with that kind of thing was no longer my responsibility, and after weighing up my options I decided to leave her to it."

The marks of genius there, I think, are the comically grotesque elaboration  not just "shot it", nor even "shot it in the face" but "shot it through the face"; and not just "a gun" or "a big gun" but "a giant gun"  and the appallingly funny cruelty of "speculative".

For the most part, women are the cruel ones in these stories. One tries to console her dumped husband by tickling him; another leaves him with a collection of sexy snaps of herself so he can boast that at least he once had her; another sells him a range of kitchenware.

Rhodes deals in the main with wan, passive, earnestly matter-of-fact men who go to their dooms with a sort of glum acceptance. "A week before our wedding day," one story begins, "my fiancee suggested I go into suspended animation and leave all the last-minute preparations to her. At first I wasn't sure about the idea, but "

Here are characters who observe themselves but do not understand themselves. One of Rhodes's protagonists shows the fiancée he dumps the less attractive girl he's leaving her for. "Are you serious?" she exclaims. "You're leaving me for her?" "I know," he replies. "It's weird."

The canine hero of Rhodes's novel Timoleon Vieta Come Home got his name from the spine of a volume of Encyclopedia Britannica ("Timoleon-Vieta"). Lord alone knows where Rhodes got the names for the women in these stories. Among them are Aqua, Sunset, Oleander, Lily of the Valley, Anemone, Midnight, Maranatha and Alanta. These are not stories that preach. In that cliched injunction they show, rather than tell. But the reader does come away with the impression that if you want a fulfilling and happy marriage, Rhodes is warning against proposing to any girl who sounds like an air-freshener.

 Sam Leith's You Talkin' to Me? is published by Profile.

Going too far is Dan Rhodes's forte. The reader is constantly and pleasurably aware that he is not a safe pair of hands. This entertaining book should not be bought by any innocent purchaser as a hint of a marriage proposal to come (although Rhodes, who seems to like writing dangerously, would almost certainly disagree). The size of a prayer book, the contents are rum, original and seriously flippant. Shorter than the average short story and occasionally no longer than a couple of paragraphs or two or three sentences, these fictional conceits are about marriage, weddings, infidelity, fatal attraction  and the lack of it. Rhodes's wilfully flat tone makes the way his stories dive into disaster and ricochet through romance much funnier. He has a comedian's talent for the deadpan.

"Marriage is the only legal contract which abrogates as between the parties all the laws that safeguard the particular relation to which it refers." This is George Bernard Shaw in full flow  quoted as the book's opening gag. Underneath, in tiny italics, is an "Author's note", which reads: "I have no idea what this means, but I'm sure it's very wise." Rhodes then gets going with his own unambiguous prose. He makes one instantly uneasy by giving his women precious (usually in both senses) names. Amethyst. Ammonite. Sunset. These women talk like patronising nannies to their stunned spouses. The men  especially if they are narrators  tend to be doltish, easily duped, the last ones to know.

In "Romantico", a wife returns from a holiday with snaps featuring a tall, handsome man  Romantico by name  with whom she intends to settle. "I want you to think of it as a fresh start for all three of us," she says. Rhodes is especially good at this nightmarish blandness. Women make nothing of their infidelities. The "other" man turns up here like a bad penny with an insulting lack of fuss or warning. Rhodes is brilliant at overturning convention and expected emotion. He takes an idea and elopes with it. In the satisfyingly ghastly "Terms and Conditions", a woman gives birth at the altar on her wedding day: "Instead of vows, all we heard were grunts, wails and language quite inappropriate for the surroundings."

In "Perfect"  one of my favourites  a couple have spent so much money on their wedding that they are rendered destitute. "Now, years later, as we huddle together for warmth under whichever bridge happens to feel the safest, we reminisce about our special day." The former groom chats about the quality of the bridesmaids' corsages, the former bride recalls the orchids and the difficulty they had in sourcing them. And about romantic destiny, Rhodes has only this to say: "When it comes to matters of romance, my fiancee is a firm believer in destiny. 'If fate has decreed that I end up married to you,' she'll sigh, 'then there's not much I can do about it, is there?'" This book has a deflationary zeal throughout  if nothing else, it is a great antidote to hot air about romance.