Men and women confront the limits of their perception as reality shifts around them, in this startlingly original debut short-story collection

'Full of pleasure and surprise' Aysegül Savas
'Devastatingly pristine' Jan Carson

A stone appears in a woman’s pocket like a charm only to end up lodged in someone’s throat. A psychic harnesses her talent for animal communication to extract a perfect revenge. A condescending artist throws a dinner party, where he discovers a painful and consequential truth.

In these twelve exquisite and uncanny stories, the world can change in an instant. The beautiful can suddenly become grotesque, the exalted disgraced, the genius an imposter. Ranging across the globe through the worlds of art, crime and fantasy, each character turns their gaze on themselves and on each other, to confront what they see with their good eye – and their bad.

'These stories trouble appearances, disrupt perspective, and flicker with humour' K. J. Orr

'Like going for a walk with a charming and cultivated guide who knows her way around some of the most vivid parts of Hell' André Alexis

"Tightly and mischievously told, they [the stories] reveal Gibson as a master of capturing relationships as they begin to fray" - Monocle