Catching Shellfish between the Tides, by Rosalyn Chissick (Sceptre, £6.99 in UK)

Few writers could hope to achieve the elusive, imaginative quality of this extraordinarily lyric, original novel which is all the more impressive as it is Chissick's debut. It is the story of Magda, a young woman whose entire life has been subjected to her desperate need for love and a place to belong. "Other people know how to live, she says. I learn only by watching them." Magda's learning involves immense pain. Her life develops into an episodic, at times nightmarish, odyssey in which the assured Chissick makes many demands on her reader. Although little more than novella-length, this is a beguiling, beautifully written and kaleidoscopic book which catches the random twists, losses and hopes of life itself.