Scrap Magic, and Other Stories: Winners of Ireland's Fish Short Story Prize (Fish, £6.95)

"More off-the-wall this time," promised Clem Cairns, the editor of the fourth annual collection of stories published in Durrus…

"More off-the-wall this time," promised Clem Cairns, the editor of the fourth annual collection of stories published in Durrus, "The Gateway to the Sheep's Head Peninsula," in West Cork. With the assistance of both the Arts Councils of Ireland, Cairns had kept his promise. More than that, some of these stories, selected, according to the introduction by Eamonn Sweeney, for "difference", "quirkiness" and "spark", are also off-the-floor and off-the-ceiling. Indeed, the overall winner, "Scrap Magic", by Richard O'Reilly, hovers much of the time in another dimension altogether. The story is narrated by a spirit that has haunted a house for two hundred years and now intermittently possesses the mind of the resident's cat. The spirit suffered a fatal drunken accident when the house was a pub, and now, when in his own "werld," has the irritating habit of spelling phonetically. There are also contributions from India, South Africa, the US and Canada, as well as Britain and Ireland - some of them wildly imaginative, some serious. Recommended.

By Patrick Skene Catling