Thank you @grantabooks for gifting me a free copy of Hiromi Kawakami's upcoming collection of micro-fiction! This one is translated by Ted Goossen and is out in August in the UK.

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This is only a tiny book, but although it's small, Kawakami packs a lot into 100 or so pages. I'll be brutally honest: the first three stories were boring. I was reading them and had a sense of... is this it? I'm going to read 36 dull pieces of flash fiction? But then, something started to unfurl.

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I don't know how I'd describe these stories - maybe magical realism? But as you progress through the collection, stranger and stranger incidents begin to occur, and you realise that this neighbourhood is not as benign as it originally seems.

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People undergo avian transformations. A stranger moves to the area with whispers of her dark past behind her. Gravity leaves them behind for a day. A new baby, undergoing numerous transformations along the way, shows up in the neighbourhood looking for a new family.

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But it's all presented in this unassuming way that I just LOVE. Kawakami doesn't make a song and dance of it. It just is. There's just something off, but it's taken for granted. Presented as normality. This is further heightened by the fact that most of the stories are three pages, no more than five. There's no time or reason for explanation, you're just being shown the sights of this strange little neighbourhood. And the blurb was right - in the end, after a dubious beginning, I loved spending time with the people in this neighbourhood. I didn't want to leave.