The Dream Mistress by Jenny Diski (Granta Books, £6.99 in UK)

Yet again Diski confirms that she is an interesting, elusive, original and underrated writer. This strange little book, more a series of curiously related short stories than a formal novel, is chillingly remarkable. Two or more women, including possibly a mother and daughter long since separated, have a chance encounter of which only the reader is aware and go on to lose control of their lives. The intensity of Diski's examination of their contrasting methods of survival is unusually unsettling. Whereas Mimi emerges from a life of careful self-protection to participate in a sexually-charged odyssey with a career womaniser, another, having found sanctuary, is banished from safety by a good deed. Passivity and power are the central themes at work in a vivid if disciplined and ambivalent narrative, which is both intellectually demanding and disturbingly erotic.