Big Mouth, by Blanaid McKinney (Phoenix, £6.99 in UK)

Blanaid McKinney's first book, a collection of 11 much-lauded stories which came out last year, is already in its second edition. That has to be interesting news for those to whom the short story genre has traditionally represented a literary cul-de-sac. Big Mouth is a book that delivers, Big Time. Each story has the potency and emotional range of a novella; many of them lodging in the memory, uncomfortable as shrapnel. These are strange, tough, and beautifully-crafted stories, brimming with imagination. If a style can have a gender, McKinney's distinctive style is masculine. "The Klondyker and the Silver Darlings", a story of love and loss set in a fishing community, is woven with the intricacy of a fishing net. "About Letters About Love, Mostly" is a cool study of paranoia. In "Transmission" a man tries to destroy terrible memories in destroying the car that killed his wife. The title story, "Big Mouth", is a chilling meditation on language, exile and violence. McKinney's own use of language and image is as honed as a poet's, and the extensive background research she must have done for this book is lightly worn, and carefully displayed. Fine stuff.