Short stories are having a moment in the sun. Although, for this superb collection of seven stories, it would be more appropriate to describe that as sun and shade – there are consistent binary juxtapositions within each story.

Relationships are at the heart of each story: with other characters, with their inner selves and with the external environment. Within those relationships are distinct contrasts: between light and dark, northern hemisphere and southern, and the biggest one – life and death.

The stories have a sense of the surreal, as if parts of the narrative are coming to us in dreams. Similarly, characters seem to be separate from the world, looking on but not always existing in the same reality. Each story is narrated in the first person by an unnamed narrator. Only in the first story, ‘Stepmother’ is the narrator’s gender described. In every other instance the author deliberately indicates that that detail is irrelevant. What differentiates each story is setting: from Australia to England, Berlin, Poland and Japan.

The titular story is set in wintery Japan with the narrator reconnecting with a friend from their younger life in rural Australia. In both ‘Secondhand’ and ‘Whitehart’ characters seem to be both real and unreal. The Australian bookshop in the former seems to have a ghost as a client and the latter – in England – has a character and setting which may or may not exist.

The final story, ‘Playback’ is the longest. The narrator has returned to Australia from Berlin and awaits their lover, Elke. The narrator records ambient sound as experimental music. Playing it back is the haunting refrain of aural memory.

Each story is strong, evocative, disturbing and brilliantly written.

Reviewed by Bob Moore