Perfect, Stories of the Impossible — Sally Emerson

In these stories of the impossible, master of the domestic thriller Sally Emerson introduces the eerie into her keen-eyed portraits of everyday life. A clerk working in a public register office begins to receive death certificates dated in the future, but can she alter fate and save the victims? A woman unable to have children discovers a way of cloning her husband, but is their cloned son destined to repeat the mistakes of his father? A suburban mother is prescribed health supplements with rather amorous side-effects; can she resist their sway and keep her hands off her neighbours? And who exactly are the tempestuous and dangerous warring couple who seem to have been alive forever? Emerson's tales of quotidian life invaded by forces beyond our control are both beguiling and uncanny, and ultimately uplifting as she celebrates the tenuous gap between reality and unreality. Likened to Roald Dahl and Helen Dunmore, with a dash of Shirley Jackson, this is fiction at its finest, a rare blend of fantasy and the literary. Magical, humorous and unfailingly honest in its depiction of humanity, Perfect will stay with the reader long after leaving the twists and turns of its pages. 'So exquisitely drawn, Sally Emerson's stories are full of gripping twists and astute insights into emotional dilemmas. They're uncanny, and quite unlike anything else you'll read' JANE THYNNE 'Emerson's skill is to subvert the humdrum with sinister undercurrents' SUNDAY TIMES 'A writer who excels in portraying the darkness beneath polished surfaces' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'Sally Emerson has a talent for terror of the best kind, she understands obsession and hints chillingly at evil' DAILY TELEGRAPH