These sharp stories by the author of A Song for Issy Bradley are mostly about being a parent (or failing to be, one way or another). They trick you into thinking they are just funny, until something disturbing pulls you up short. There is sadness, too, plenty of it, held up against the anodyne world of parenting manuals and positive thinking for maximum contrast. Shades of Angela Carter colour Bray’s title story retelling of “Hansel and Gretel”, while Fay Weldon and Jane Gardam are godmothers to Bray’s fiction as well, bringing gifts of satire and observation that can prick and draw blood. Here babies are like dolls and dolls like babies. Death is a frequent visitor, picking off its victims with impunity. Several characters have a dangerous fascination with death, and we are shown, time and again, that an active imagination can do real harm to its possessor. Bray structures her stories well, linking still-raw childhood hurts to adult mis-steps. She’s good on the cruelties of old age, as both suffered and dished out. That deceptively light touch delivers swift, hard punches to the solar plexus.
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