Interview with Suyin Du Bois

Suyin Du Bois is a poet of mixed Chinese-Malaysian and Belgian heritage, living in London with her South African husband. Her poems have been published in Propel, Iamb, Stanzas, Bi+ Lines: An Anthology of Contemporary Bi+ Poets (Fourteen Publishing, 2023) and Malaysian Places and Spaces (Maya Press, 2024), amongst others. She is a member of the Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective 2024/25. When not obsessing over word choice, Suyin spends her time building a profit-with-purpose start-up that seeks to ensure 24/7 access to nutritious, affordable food for NHS hospital staff. Eating Air is her debut pamphlet.

Interviewed by Laura Sygrove

LS: Eating Air opens with "Ode to Kaya," a poem that moves between childhood and adulthood. Why did this feel like the right poem to begin the collection?

SDB: "Ode to Kaya" was the first poem I wrote where food took such a central role, and it really opened up something in me. Suddenly I was thinking of all the different ways food could help me explore different areas of emotional interest. Since this poem acted as a gateway for me, I hoped it might do the same for my reader. Beyond that, it seeded some key context and themes for the collection which I hoped would help get the reader quickly into this world: the idea of multiple homes at distance from one another, the connective power of food, as well as tensions around identity.

LS: In poems such as this one, there is a sense that food and memory change when carried across borders. How has living in London affected your relationship to the places and traditions you write about?

SDB: Certainly, I think distance romanticises the worlds that you are apart from, and that we are more at risk of taking for granted that to which we have daily access. In my writing I am often trying to capture elements of the world that are not my day-to-day, to make my memories and momentary impressions tangible. Regarding living in London specifically, I love how culturally mixed London feels to me, how it feels like a place where I can be all the parts of myself. I do think it is a very positive influence on my writing in this sense. 

LS: Your preface connects food, poetry, and a sense of home, while many poems explore questions of identity and belonging. How has writing poetry helped you navigate the cultures, languages, and places that have shaped you? 

SDB: What a beautiful question. I love the reflective nature of writing poetry. It encourages me to ask questions of myself, to think about what I’m interested in communicating and why. There are parts of my cultural upbringing that are already bedded in, others I have consciously sought out for myself, and others I am only learning about now. I am still being shaped. It’s all a work in progress, and I think poetry has a supportive, parallel role to play in that. Beyond this, I love how poetry connects me to other people. I have some readers who have similar upbringings and background to me and others who have completely different ones. Hearing both these sets of readers highlight something I wrote that resonates with them is beautiful and fills me with a new sense of belonging. I honestly can’t get enough of it. 

LS: Much of the collection is written in prose poetry. What drew you to this form, and how do you decide when a poem needs a different structure?

SDB: Pretty much every poem for me starts as a brief note about a specific idea or memory. My Notes app is full of these! When I have time to sit down and write, I take one of these ideas and free-write to try to get down as much core and tangential detail as I can. From this free-write, I pick out the elements that I think make a poem, and then start writing toward that in a much more structured fashion. Usually this is where I start to introduce form. I'm firstly interested in making line breaks and stanzas work with my own cadence and pacing: I will always read my poems out loud throughout the editing process (a big reason why I struggle to edit in public!). Beyond that, I look at the overall shape and feel of the poem, and try to use the form to introduce some element of surprise or highlight particular words or ideas. 

For the slash poems in the collection, I still see these as line-broken poems rather than prose poems. In "Cut Scenes" this felt right at first due to the fragmentary nature of retelling memories that aren't mine, where I am inserting myself. Additionally, there was something about the poem being sliced up like steak that I rather liked! In "Every trip to Brussels must include a Sunday," again these felt like fragments of varying interconnectivity all stuck together in one big way, so the close separateness of the slash felt right to me here as well.

LS: In poems such as "Auntie Pixi’s Aga Agak," recipes become a way of preserving memory. What interested you about those moments where cultural inheritance feels both intimate and incomplete? 

SDB: While I very much embrace my two heritages, I feel a certain level of disconnectedness also for two key reasons (and perhaps others too). Firstly, I never knew any of my grandparents, they all passed away before I was born. Secondly, I can't speak any of my heritage languages fluently. As I've gotten older these things have bothered me more and I've mourned that feeling of distance, even in the context of love, with older family members who have now passed. This is a continuing area of interest for me.

LS: "Chinese New Year at Sara’s" explores the tension between inheriting traditions and reshaping them. Why was that an important theme for you to write about? 

SDB: I suspect that I or the things that I do will never be whole or authentic enough for some people, and so I'm conscious that I need to claim and celebrate these differences for myself. Knowing this and doing it, however, are not the same thing! Having said that, I actually didn’t realise that’s where this poem was going to go when I started to write it. It took me to quite a bold, declarative place all by itself. 

LS: The title Eating Air comes from Hokkien and Malay expressions connected to food, wellbeing, and travel. When did you realise it was the right title for the collection, and what does the phrase mean to you now?

SDB: I had these phrases "chiak hong" and "makan angin" noted down as a seed idea for a poem for a long time, and planned to explore how these idioms for travelling translate to "eating air," but I just never ended up writing into the idea. When I was getting my sample of ten poems together in response to The Emma Press open call for submissions, I needed to give the collection a working title in the proposal. I was struggling to find something within the sequence of poems itself and this jumped out at me when I turned to my Notes app for inspiration. It just seemed to fit perfectly with how the poems invite the reader to travel across the world with them. I also love how the title is intriguing in English as an unusual turn of phrase. I’ve had several people ask me the story behind it. Luckily, I was able to include an explanation in the preface, which unravels this for non-Malaysians.

LS: Food carries memory, grief, family history, identity, and belonging throughout the pamphlet. What does food allow you to explore in poetry that other subjects might not?

SDB: Food gives me a really concrete, sensory way into so many different subjects. I can start off free-writing about the physical experience of eating and end up somewhere completely different, abstract or even undefined, which I might otherwise struggle to get to or to articulate without the more tangible language of food. 

It felt really generative for me as well, having this theme of food to play with. I was constantly thinking of new meaningful food moments, and noting them all down. I was really conscious that I didn’t want to be writing the same poem over and over again though, so I kept pushing myself to make sure each poem took me in a new direction. 

About the interviewer
Laura Sygrove is a graduate of the MA Creative Writing programme at the University of Leicester. She is an advance reader at DartFrog Books and writes for The Publishing Post. You can read some of her poems here, here and here. You can read a review by Laura of Eating Air by Suyin Du Bois on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Review by Lee Wright of "New & Collected Poems" by Jeffrey Wainwright

Forty-eight years in the making, Jeffrey Wainwright’s New & Collected Poems takes us back. It begins in 1978 with his collection Heart’s Desire – a maiden voyage to bring love and war to the page, giving the reader every ounce of life’s frustration and elation. Wainwright allows the poems to spill from his pen like a gardener shaking earth from a bulb of garlic. 

In Selected Poems (1985), his verses are often as cold as sealskin, but it’s a cold we all must face, to understand what it is to feel human. Even the subject of love in Selected Poems barely moves grass. Love, like poetry, is present, but it doesn’t change the world. Wainwright remains tightly focused on the human mind. The poems wind around the reader like vines. He avoids happiness and instead writes of Thomas Müntzer, the deteriorating mental health of George III and dead sweethearts. What is in Wainwright’s mind cannot be touched. 

The Red-Headed Pupil (1994) is a gentle reminder that as the world changes, so we change. We are, as Wainwright points out, plasticine men, shaped by our surroundings. He asks the reader tenderly if they are content among the paving stones. 

The poems stretch from 1999 to the present day, and it is these newer poems that feel deeply personal. "Did you just give up and go" is a line I’ll never get over or forget. In another line he asks, "O my soul, where are you?" which is one of those questions we collect like scars on the body as we age. Is it possible to avoid becoming world-weary as we hold on to the years? Throughout New & Collected Poems, Wainwright is concerned with this question. And who will replace us when we’re gone? That too is something the collection left me asking.  

To borrow Wainwright’s line, "the fish in cold preserve their flesh," just as the ageing poet preserves his reputation in this collected works. 

About the reviewer

Dr Lee Wright holds a PhD from the University of Leicester in Creative Non-Fiction and has had numerous pieces of short fiction and non-fiction published. 

Review by Laura Sygrove of "Eating Air" by Suyin Du Bois

 

Suyin Du Bois’ debut poetry pamphlet is a tapestry of shared cultures, a smorgasbord of delectable delights and rough estimations; a rich blend of seasoned memories and flashes in the pan. Eating Air is complex, intimate, and oftentimes devastating; a journey into the past in an attempt to preserve the present, always just seconds out of reach.

Besides Du Bois’ poetry, I’ve thought of little else for weeks. Her work begs you to read the words aloud, to savour each syllable as the speaker savours each meal. Eating Air is a collection of flavour samples that dance on the tongue and settle in the pit of your stomach. Du Bois transports the reader across oceans to sit at low dining tables, folding meal trays at high altitude, beside hospital beds and roadside stalls, relishing the familiar taste of airline food and leftovers, sand-roasted chestnuts, French pastries, and makeshift noodle dinners.

For Du Bois, eating and writing are both acts of remembering and belonging, or of not quite belonging, and of longing itself. In her preface, she describes feeling poetry in her body in much the same way as food, where "certain combinations of words can have just the right mouthfeel." Food nourishes the body while carrying emotional and cultural memory. Poetry preserves that memory, remaking it through language: "I stir and stir like her until my spoon draws the right depths of lineage."

As a title, Eating Air feels both grounding and elusive, suggesting nourishment while gesturing towards something intangible: "store-bought surrogates," swaddled exports with their "layers thinned," family recipes spooned from jam jars for the very last time. Her work reads almost as a series of diary entries, reimagining transitory yet toothsome moments in a search for self through places, memories, and identities that resist easy definition.

Du Bois writes with complete transparency, embracing the discomfort of existing between cultures. She allows these tensions to remain unresolved, capturing the feeling of being both within and without. Her poems linger in that in-between space, searching for belonging without ever insisting upon certainty. My favourite line in the collection, "I insist we oil our bloodlines mackerel slick," is as tender as it is visceral, preserving heritage not as something fixed, but as something living and lovingly maintained. In Eating Air, nourishment is found not only in food, but in language and memory, and the act of returning to them.

About the reviewer
Laura Sygrove is a graduate of the MA Creative Writing programme at the University of Leicester. She is an advance reader at DartFrog Books and writes for The Publishing Post. You can read some of her poems here, here and here.  

You can read more about Eating Air by Suyin Du Bois on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Saleh Razzouk of "Strangers" by Rebecca Ruth Gould

Strangers is a collection of short stories by Rebecca Ruth Gould, some of which first appeared in an earlier version under the longer title Strangers in Love. This new edition retains most of the original stories, with significant additions. As Gould writes in her prefatory note, these are stories of "lost bonds, fleeting connections, and relationships formed at a distance." While the first set of stories explored civilizational tensions—particularly encounters across East/West divides, often mediated through encounters that occasionally evolve into fleeting love affairs with inevitable dead ends—the new edition expands the thematic scope in two key directions.  

The first is the treatment of the cities the narrator visits, ranging from snow-covered English towns to the layered cityscapes of Tbilisi and Damascus, and finally to the scorching heat of Abu Dhabi. Between these climatic and cultural poles, Gould introduces readers to foreign lands through both direct experience and deep scholarship. 

In one particularly striking story, "Hands," Tehran emerges as a dystopian space, where the private and the political collapse into one another: "Strange how acts of affection, expressions of love, can be made into crimes." The story’s atmosphere is reminiscent of the surveilled worlds of Orwell’s 1984 and We, the prophetic novel by Russian dissident Yevgeny Zamyatin. 

This symbolic geography reaches its emotional peak in "When You Are Old," where Gould expresses deep affection for Tbilisi while sharply criticising the forces that have historically drained it of vitality. The narrative casts Tbilisi as a wounded yet dignified space, caught between imperial appetites and regional violence. The Tbilisi setting  grounds this historical imagination in architecture: "The blue and gold tiles covering the Blue Bath’s walls belonged to an age of peaceful exchanges between peoples of different faiths, languages, and ethnicities." The narrator’s voice here is not merely descriptive but accusatory, blending historical grievance with personal reverence.  

This shift does not mean that love has disappeared from the stories; rather, the love plots are increasingly shaped by questions of cultural translation, especially by the ways Arab and Middle Eastern cultures are represented, refracted, and sometimes misrecognised in English-language fiction. In "Speaking in Tongues," for example, intimacy itself becomes linguistic invention: "With time, they cultivated a language that only made sense to the two of them." The stories resist a superficial language of hybridity, in which East and West are folded too easily into coexistence, and instead insist on the  weight of historical and cultural difference. The story "Goodbye, Home" similarly underscores how the histories of peoples struggling under imperial appetites shape their present. 

The surface of travel and urban encounter, loosely bundled with love, politics, and culture, does not become documentary prose in the manner of Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich. Instead, it moves closer to the autobiographical and politically observant fiction of Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim, particularly his late novel Amricanly (2003), giving the autobiographical dimension greater informational density and archival texture.

A second dimension that sets this book apart  is its pedagogical impulse, which situates the individual within a longer cross-generational history. Gould’s characters are shaped by national histories, and guided not only by personal desire but also by conscience and civic duty. Her portrayal of the Middle East works through symbolic and affective registers. But the exile’s struggle to survive is often rendered through gestures such as a walk in the rain (as in "When You Are Old"), a few exchanged letters, or scripts written in what the story calls a "sleeping language." In these stories, languages do not simply die. They transform slowly, like energy, which neither disappears nor emerges from nothing.  

In this way, Strangers embodies both the outsider’s gaze and the passionate witness of a writer intent on preserving memory and dignity for oppressed peoples who have borne centuries of injustice.  

About the reviewer
Saleh Razzouk is a Syrian fiction writer, translator, and Associate Professor at the University of Aleppo. Born in Aleppo province in 1959, he was educated at Aleppo University and Gliwice Polytechnic in Poland, and also studied at Bolton Institute and the University of Nottingham in the UK. His first book was published by the Union of Arabic Writers in 1980, and his translations of contemporary poetry and literary criticism have appeared in Poetry International, Poetry London, The Bitter Oleander, and The Laurel Review.

Review by Paul Taylor-McCartney of "High Spirits: A Round of Drinking Stories," ed. Karen Stevens and Jonathan Taylor

At first glance, High Spirits appears to be an anthology united by a simple premise: stories in which alcohol plays a central role. Yet what soon becomes apparent is that this is far less a book about drink than it is about the people who drink, and the complicated lives that unfold around them. 

Stevens' and Taylor's comprehensive introduction is a critical essay in itself and hugely informative, in which they argue that "drunkenness is itself often a story," complete with a "beginning ... a middle ... and an end." It is a perceptive observation, for throughout, alcohol is rarely the subject itself. Rather, it becomes the catalyst through which loneliness, desire, memory, grief and hope are revealed.  

The anthology brings together an impressive range of contemporary writers, including both editors, Louis de Bernières, Jenn Ashworth, Alison Moore, Bethan Roberts and Desmond Barry, each bringing a distinctive voice and treatment of the premise. Some stories are comic, others unsettling; some quietly elegiac, others darkly surreal. 

One of its greatest strengths is its refusal to moralise. Drink is neither glamourised nor condemned. Instead, it’s presented as part of ordinary experience: a celebration, a habit, an escape, often a consolation, sometimes the beginning of connection and, more pointedly, the cause of its collapse. The emotional range is striking, allowing humour to sit comfortably beside vulnerability and loss. Jenn Ashworth's "Jackie Kennedy and the Widow" offers an unflinching meditation on grief, while Michael Stewart's "Painting the Walls White" explores memory and disorientation through themes of forgetting and losing one's way. Melanie Whipman's "Tasting Notes" provides another distinctive voice, demonstrating how drink can become less a subject than a lens through which relationships and identity are examined.

What emerges is a portrait of contemporary life in all its contradictions. These are stories of imperfect lives, where moments of celebration sit uneasily alongside loneliness, regret and longing. Shared drinks become occasions for confession, confrontation and reconciliation; solitary ones speak of absence and loss. Throughout, alcohol functions not as the subject but as a catalyst, bringing into sharp relief those fragile aspects of ourselves we usually keep hidden. 

It’s easy to see why High Spirits won the 2019 Saboteur Award for Best Anthology. It matures beautifully as it unfolds. Individual stories possess their own distinct flavour, yet together they create something richer than the sum of their parts. Like a conversation that grows more candid as the evening wears on, these stories remain in the mind long after the final shot, inviting readers back for the richness of their voices and the truths they quietly reveal about what it is to be both human and fallible. Intoxicating stuff. 

About the reviewer
Dr Paul Taylor-McCartney is a writer, researcher and lecturer. His interests include dystopian literature, queer studies, children’s fiction and initial teacher education. His poetry, short fiction and academic articles have appeared in a wide range of print and electronic media, and fiction titles he recently worked on as commissioning editor have won regional readers’ and publishers’ awards. His debut novel, Sisters of the Pentacle, was published by Hermitage Press in 2022, and his first non-fiction title, Cornwall Uncharted: Mapping Cornwall’s Queer History of Concealment, Culture and Creativity was published by The History Press (June 2026), to great acclaim.

Review by Isabelle McIntyre of "Demon Copperhead" by Barbara Kingsolver

If you hadn’t already clocked from the title, Demon Copperhead is inspired by Charles Dickens’ partly autobiographical David Copperfield, published in 1850 and a personal favourite of Dickens among his own novels. Kingsolver has created a truly visionary re-envisioning, following the original plot almost to the letter but in a cleverly modernised format: swapping the workhouse for meth labs, Victorian charity schools for foster care, industrial exploitation for the opioid epidemic, cobblestone streets for Dollar Generals as our protagonist narrates his life from childhood to maturity, chronicling the highs and lows (and they are low) of his upbringing in modern day Appalachia.

Our main character has been dealt an extremely unlucky hand. Just when you think Demon is at rock bottom, the bottom bottoms out. I particularly loved the line "The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between." Yet what struck me about Demon’s endless struggles was how refreshing it was to see him portrayed, not as a martyr for foster kids or poster-boy for poverty, but as a human being that was often bitter, vengeful, acerbic, and angry at his fate. Through it all, Demon is not perfect, he is fallible, exhausted by the uphill battle of his life, yet always incredibly resilient. For me, the sentiment behind his indomitable spirit hit home in regards to my own experiences in life, from losing my own mother and a plethora of other personal challenges.

For 550 wild and wonderful pages, Demon’s unfortunate reality is your reality. No matter how much we want to pretend that we can keep the bad fortune at bay and protect our privilege through our own virtue, this novel is an intense reminder that we are all at the mercy of sheer dumb luck – and we don’t have to be happy about it, despite what toxic positivity self-help books would tell you. I’d love to personally thank Barbara Kingsolver for writing this nuanced and compassionate book as I genuinely believe it’s one of those novels that changes the way you think forever. Isn’t that what reading books is about? To escape your own life to step into someone else’s shoes, and come back all the better for it. 

About the reviewer
Isabelle McIntyre is a publishing hopeful and currently working as a Bookseller with Waterstones. She reads a wide variety of titles but particularly enjoys literary fiction, with some her of favourite authors including Donna Tartt, Barbara Kingsolver, John Boyne, Lionel Shriver, and Joanna Glen. She has a BA in Politics and Spanish and takes pleasure in engaging with a range of international and political perspectives in her reading and the Substack blog she writes, Read Receipts.

Review by Isabelle McIntyre of "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck

East of Eden is one of the most divisive modern classics going. Its intensity has created two opposing camps - those who love it, and those who hate it – for there is simply no middle ground when it comes to this legendary family saga. I confess myself firmly in the "love it" camp, devouring the whopping 700 pages in just under two weeks and it has remained in my mind ever since. 

I would argue that the beauty of this novel is its pacing. It’s long – in fact, the vast majority of East of Eden is a garrulous and digressive labyrinth of several generations of side plots, monologuing, and contextual development. Yet, in our impatient modern world where we need everything faster and faster, craving instant gratification and battling ever shorter attention spans, East of Eden takes its time. It plods. It meanders. It stands atop the hill and enjoys the view. 

Specifically, the view of the Salinas Valley. One of the most primary and widely acknowledged achievements of East of Eden is its ability to bottle the sights, sounds, and smells of the Californian "salad bowl" region, so named because of its agricultural wonders and fertile soil. Steinbeck had a deep love of place, endeavouring to capture on the page both the breath-taking scenery of his homeland, as well as the human history behind the hardships of a rural existence and the complexities of agrarian development. In the two major families in East of Eden, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, Steinbeck weaves personal history with the broader narrative of the region. Despite having never set foot in the state, I was overwhelmed with a sensory overload of the Salinas Valley through his poetic homage to the area, starting from the very first page. 

I also adored the sprawling, tapestry-esque depiction of families, with all their flaws and quirks and eccentricities. I gasped aloud at the descriptions of the characters, because it was as if I was hearing my own abstract thoughts articulated into beautiful, expressive prose. I had shivers at the idea that a person who died half a century before I was even born could possibly have written down a thought that I had once had, whose words could speak to a feeling I imagined only I knew.

Furthermore, I think the overwhelming spiritual essence of the book is its defining feature. For me, it transcends your everyday books into the realm of the classic, the American mythos, the literary greats. It feels almost primordial. East of Eden is about interrogating human nature and finding the abiding human spirit, and that is simply a big old topic, and it feels deep and intense despite the whimsical prose and eccentric characters. Steinbeck carries you along his narrative river, sweeping you up in the gentle flow of rich world-building, and then drops you off the edge of the metaphorical waterfall with a bewildering, visceral nugget of wisdom that elevates this book far beyond a restrictive literary agenda.

In summary, I loved East of Eden. Straight to the top 5. It did everything a book should - it made me laugh, made me cry, made me think, most importantly it made me feel. It’s inspired me to read more modern classics and release them from the shackles of sleepy English Literature classes world over, because this book felt modern, important, and completely unique.

About the reviewer
Isabelle McIntyre is a publishing hopeful and currently working as a Bookseller with Waterstones. She reads a wide variety of titles but particularly enjoys literary fiction, with some her of favourite authors including Donna Tartt, Barbara Kingsolver, John Boyne, Lionel Shriver, and Joanna Glen. She has a BA in Politics and Spanish and takes pleasure in engaging with a range of international and political perspectives in her reading and the Substack blog she writes, Read Receipts.

Review by Jasper Sygrove of "The Cherry Tree Theory" by Rich & Rox Pink

The Cherry Tree Theory is a beautifully written and deeply reflective book, which uses the real-time revival of a once-dying cherry tree as a powerful metaphor for personal growth and healing. After moving in together, Rich and Rox Pink revisit some of the darkest chapters of their lives, while pouring their love into nurturing a rich, fruitful garden. The Cherry Tree Theory creates a moving parallel between nature’s resilience and the human capacity to recover, adapt, and thrive.

The metaphors woven throughout the book are thoughtful, relatable, and leave you with plenty to reflect on. From setting healthy boundaries to rebuilding after difficult experiences, the lessons feel authentic and nuanced. The story gently reminds us that growth is rarely linear, but with patience, care, and perseverance, it's possible to create the future we've always hoped for.

While everyone's experiences are different and not every story will resonate with every reader, the underlying message is universal: there is always light at the end of the tunnel. I finished this book feeling inspired, motivated, and more optimistic about embracing life's challenges. This is a heartfelt, uplifting read that lingers in your thoughts long after you've turned the final page.

If you're curious but not quite ready to dive into the book, Rich and Rox Pink have also created a short companion episode as part of their podcast series "Late Bloomers," with each chapter summarised in 60 seconds or less. It's a brilliant introduction that offers a flavour of what's to come, without giving away the heart of the journey.

About the reviewer
Jasper Sygrove is a 27-year-old trans content creator, music producer, and cosplayer, with a lifelong passion for all things nerdy. From TV shows and movies, to video games and books, Jasper loves discovering and discussing the stories that leave a lasting impression. As a new reviewer, Jasper is excited to share honest, thoughtful reviews, and connect with others who enjoy exploring the worlds of entertainment and storytelling.

Review by Jonathan Wilkins of "Monstrum" by Lottie Mills

I read Lottie Mills’ debut collection Monstrum in a couple of sittings. The stories are that good! They explore what is monstrous, and what we may perceive as otherness. They challenge the reader and society to re-examine all of our deep rooted assumptions. Every single beautifully crafted story is an eerie, gripping and alluring message to our world. And each is unequivocally strong in its own right, unique but connected through the theme of disability and the monstrous, because Mills shows us that being different doesn’t mean we are worse than what might be perceived as the norm. It might be that Monstrum isn’t for every reader, but it is worth every reader having a go. 

"The Mirror" shows a young girl doing the shopping for her supposedly monstrous mistress. Through her small acts of kindness, she makes the relationship work and rejects this conception of monstrosity. There is an implied sexual relationship in the story, and a poignant ending. 

"The Changeling," the opening story, sticks with the reader long after they finish and we can see why it was a prize winner. It’s a sublime, ethereal tale about deformity and physical change, and asks what are our expectations of what we see as normal. The writing is evocative and clear. 

In "The Cuckoo," as the title implies, we are confronted by a strange child who infiltrates a household, and removes the protagonist from her own life with weird ease. This is psychological horror story demonstrating the terror of being replaced, unseen, unprotected. 

"The Body" features a particularly belligerent attitude towards disability. It is set in a world where you can ask for, or purchase a new body. The main character in this story finds it difficult to let go of her old body and struggles to cope with the physical changes that come with a new non-disabled body. When she uses her old wheelchair, it is a particularly discordant moment. She finds that her new, whole body no longer has the muscle memory her original one had, and she is forced to relearn much of what used to be  habitual, her own "normal." Mills never takes the easy way out. She examines how this is not an easy solution and the myriad struggles that it brings with it. The main character is confronted when others find out about her original disabled body, and the complex relationship she now has with the new body.

Mills has shown the reader a world where inhumanity often comes from the ordinary, and where we can see kindness and warmth in those that we have been taught to fear. The result is a beautifully strong collection of stories that are heartbreaking at times as well as being intellectually rigorous, and written in prose that is so pure that it is almost perfection. Monstrum is a critical, politically sensitive piece of disability literature disguised as gothic nightmare, grotesque theatre. Mills invites us into her darkness, and we cannot escape, demanding we see the beauty, potential, power and provocation flourishing there. It is a dazzling, remarkable debut.

About the reviewer
Jonathan Wilkins is 69. He is married to the gorgeous Annie with two wonderful sons. He was a teacher for twenty years, a Waterstones’ bookseller and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years before taking up writing seriously. Nowadays he takes notes for students with Special Needs at Leicester and Warwick Universities. He has had a work commissioned by the UK Arts Council and several pieces published traditionally as well as on-line. He has had poems in magazines and anthologies, art galleries, studios, museums and at Huddersfield Railway Station. He loves writing poetry. For his MA, he wrote a crime novel, Utrecht Snow. He followed it up with Utrecht Rain, and is now writing a third part. He is currently writing a crime series, Poppy Knows Best, set at the end of the Great War and into the early 1920s.