The Dead Fish Museum continues the American short story tradition of perfectly rendered character interactions, combined with Charles D’Ambrosio’s flair for the slightly surreal. And it is these surreal moments that make the stories so haunting. A man watches a ballerina set herself ablaze in ‘Screenwriter’. A young boy tries to understand God and divorce while looking for a Sasquatch in ‘The High Divide’. Each of these stories is unique, and all of them are complete and beautiful in themselves.

Testimony to his skill is shown in ‘Up North’, where the characters are gently fracturing in a marriage that is ‘a constant halving of distance’. His characters and settings are skilfully created, and his proficiency with language enables him to perfectly render his arresting scenes. Foundation powder in a compact mirror becomes ‘flesh dust’. A woman’s knees in faint blue light look ‘as though they’d been carved by water from a bar of soap’.

In this collection, D’Ambrosio shows us stories with a tenderness that can only come from a genuine love for writing.