Several years ago, when I booked Australian poet Candy Royalle for a gig in Cardiff, she had just picked up Cardigan-based writer Carly Holmes’ first novel The Scrapbook, and confessed to me her surprise at discovering this book’s brilliance. Holmes is an author who is not just ‘good for Wales’, but good on a world-class scale, and deserving of a similarly far-reaching reputation; second novel Crow Face, Doll Face further cements that opinion.

It’s a magic-realist tale in which two sisters, nicknamed Crow Face and Doll Face, are born into a slightly poor, sometimes troubled family unit. Narrated from the point of view of their mother – who believes the pair to be, from birth, special – the story is still very much grounded in realism, portraying the thoughts and emotions of an overworked, abandoned, unhappy, but still generally loving mother with skill, sensitivity and nuance.

As in The Scrapbook, and Holmes’ short fiction, characters’ minds and motives are complex yet convincingly portrayed. Holmes embraces the darker shades of human psychology, an eerie, unsettling sense of expectation imbuing finely wrought prose as we gear up towards the story’s culmination, giving the reader a spine tingle here, an intake of breath there.

Plot points are unexpected, delivered with flair and fluency; each chapter, too, is perfectly structured from opening to end point, reminding me a little of Dickens’ ability to keep reader interest piqued through precise, poised sections that give just enough but still leave you wanting more. As inspired and imaginative as it is logical, well-paced and keenly observed, Crow Face, Doll Face is thoroughly absorbing from start to finish; I read it very quickly, and would urge you to do the same.