A teenager stares at his reflection and sees the Milky Way. A motorbike prowls and growls like a wild animal. A whale sings a song to end loneliness.

Philip Ridley’s collection of short stories - like his two adult novels, Crocodilia and In the Eyes of Mr Fury - became an instant cult classic when first published in 1990. Magical, poetic, heartbreaking and humorous, the sequence explores childhood, family life, romantic love in all its aspects - lost, unrequited, obsessional - and does so with a haunting mixture of both the barbaric and the beautiful that has become Ridley’s trademark. In particular, these tales deal with the experience of growing up gay in a world still bristling with prejudice, and they sing and howl with the need for equality and freedom.

This edition includes two new stories, Alien Heart and Wonderful Insect , and finally completes a seminal and compelling collection first begun over thirty years ago.

‘Ridley sets off a deliberate quiet and matter-of-fact prose against touches of glowing passion …The stories achieve a startling variety. The power of the book as a whole, however, derives from the way in which these different voices blend in a single cry of frustration and regret.’ - Times Literary Supplement.

‘Menace lurks in the shady corners of family life … Chilling.’ - Time Out

‘Ridley is a visionary.’ - Rolling Stone