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This is Kate Atkinson's first collection of stories, and they are brilliant, daring, witty and provocative. Inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, or, if you prefer, by Prada, Mary Poppins, Moschino and Barbie, these stories are full of the poignancy of abandoned children and lonely adults, the seductiveness of our consumer society, and the fatalism of a post-Apocalyptic world.

From Charlene and Trudi, madly shopping while bombs explode softly in the world outside, to gormless Eddie, a cataloguer of fish, and Meredith Zane who discovered the secret to eternal life, each of these stories posits a skewed reality glimpsed out of the corner of an eye. When the worlds of material existence and imagination collide, anything is possible...

Comprising the following stories:

• Charlene and Trudi Go Shopping
• Tunnel of Fish
• Transparent Fiction
• Dissonance
• Sheer Big Waste of Love
• Unseen Translation
• Evil Doppelgangers
• The Cat Lover
• The Bodies Vest
• Temporal Anomaly
• Wedding Favors
• Pleasureland