Dipping into Miss Cross & Other Stories is like dipping into a box of strange and delicious biscuits or being offered a platter of unusual fruits that you don’t know the name of but taste, in some aspects, familiar.

In these stories, whilst you might recognise the thematic centre of the sweetmeat offered – this one is ‘love’; this one is ‘injustice’; this one is ‘sex’ and so forth – the rest of it remains unfamiliar, making the tales here unpredictable, exciting, and delightful: an incredibly affecting combination as I’m sure you’ll agree.

Nearly all of the tales, in one form or another, feature animals. And so, in one story, we are confronted with a breast-suckling cat; in another, a canary who acts as a sort of ‘love bird’; in another, a ‘love rat’ who may be a pet but is also a voyeur, allowing us a glimpse into a steamy, sexy world. The animals may be central or incidental in these stories, but they all have important parts to play; the humans, however, remain Schwenk’s main concern, as he paints a plethora of people, all different, all well observed and entirely believable, with empathy and wit in equal measure.

In those few stories where there are no animals as characters, for example, Who’s There? there are “peacock feathers” and mentions of dogs and a ”spidery” cellar, so that animal images are never far away; and, indeed, the residents in this story are cooped up rather like animals, with our keeping of creatures and relationships of possession generally another theme which runs throughout the book. Overall, it’s an enticing, exciting, and enlivening read: a great book by a great writer—a big tick for Miss Cross, from me.