I have just ordered this author’s poetry collection on the strength of Ephraim’s Eyes. It is a stunning book, although I am still reeling from the impact of the personal tragedies that befall the characters in each story. Reading it made me mindful of the deep melancholy at the heart of ‘Lear’ or Hopkins’ lines: ‘O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall/Frightful, sheer, no-man fathomed. Hold them cheap/May who ne’er hung there.’ What I like best about this book – heartbreaking though the contents be – is the way story-making structure is turned on its head. There is no linear narrative here, no neat beginning, middle and end. The reader may think he/she is at the start of a tale only to find it is somewhere in the middle or close to the end, juxtaposed and alternating with other elements of time and place. Images shift and alter our focus as well – we are never grounded and secure – a starfish in ’16 Planets’ may evoke a childhood story, nursery wallpaper, a no longer used cot mobile, a stranded predator or a victim of the rising seas. Ephraim’s Eyes stayed in my thoughts long after I had finished reading its poetic, skilful, shocking and moving pages. I find myself haunted by the questions it asks – questions to which there are a multitude of possible answers but no solutions. Read the story ‘Speckled Hen’ and you’ll see what I mean. We are left, as is the character in ‘Grifola Frondosa’, sitting on a hard floor with no overhead light, alone in the ‘fragile dark.’