SHORT STORIES

PROPERTY: A COLLECTION by Lionel Shriver

(The Borough Press £14.99) The stand- out story in Property is the novella The Standing Chandelier — a deliciously sharp look at a long- term friendship that founders on art, antagonism and wonderfully acute passive-aggressive social engagement.

Ruination of relationships, bad behaviour in shared spaces and unexpected outcomes from co- habitation are the themes in this whipsmart collection.

In Vermin, house ownership, raccoons and a sheltering vine hex the happy-go-lucky love of a musician and a mural painter.

Domestic Terrorism explores what happens when a seemingly lackadaisical child has alarming foresight into the taxing questions of house inheritance and personal responsibility.

And The Subletter dissects the competitive flatshare brinkmanship of two Americans in Belfast.

Crisp, conversational and convincingly true to life, Shriver’s stories are a treat. THE SEA BEAST TAKES A LOVER by Michael Andreasen (Apollo £16.99) A KRAKEN who has fallen in love with a ship called the Winsome Bride, four grumpy saints who suddenly, inexplicably, find themselves in a strange house with many rooms, and the unnerving abandonment of ageing fathers to the deep waters of a faraway sea showcase the playful nature of Andreasen’s 11 stories.

Marrying fantastical situations with contemporary references, the most successful wear their other- worldly inventiveness lightly — Andy, Lord Of Ruin, featuring a radiant boy, ‘bleeding light from every pore, spitting out rays like a mirror ball’, is careful in its construction, laconic in its tone.

however, the jarring destinies of the women in these worlds — who include headless (Jenny), porn stars (Rockabye, Rocketboy) or ‘a bitch who has multiplied’ ( The Sea Beast Takes A Lover) — suggest an unfortunate failure of imagination.