These are stories that unpick life’s ghastly moments

– the accidental murder of a cat, a slash of lightning that strikes a young girl – stories that travel along the nerve of existence and locate our commonality, our domestic plights, our sexual fluxing, our succumbing to age, the way we crash and soar.

With tones of both the ridiculous and the sublime, Kik Lodge gives us finely-tuned intimacies, she ploughs the unutterable, coaxes human behaviour into the light, exploring the flash fiction form with an agility that few possess.

Lodge sees into the fretwork of family, the humour and equilibrium at its heart; she understands love gone numb, sibling love, sex-speak, and the mire of vulnerability that is life. Unforgettable, vital, from beginning to end.

Catherine McNamara, Guest Editor Best Small Fictions 2023, Litro Flash Fiction Editor

Cover art by Arash Razavi

IG: sketchbash