Wish I Was Here Jackie Kay Picador, 198pp, £12.99 ISBN 0330373315

Artfully crafted, funny and sad, Jackie Kay's second collection of short stories is mostly about loss. A woman's husband has died; a rock climber has lost his lover on the mountainside; a long-time lesbian relationship is breaking up. Kay's gift, though, is for avoiding the obvious. "It is not so much that we are splitting up that is really worrying me,"says narrator Ruth of her partner, "it is the fact that she keeps quoting Martin Amis." The story ends with the two women firing portentous Amis quotes at each other, in a scene that hilariously captures the rising aggression of their break-up.

In the title story, Paula's ex-girlfriend is going on holiday with her new partner, and Paula has sneaked ahead to surprise them. "I've been told I'm good company. I've been told that twice in my life and each time it has gone in," says Paula, comically and poignantly. Kay uses the first-person voice beautifully throughout the collection, as characters confess their predicaments to themselves and to the reader. Yet she is an impressively versatile writer, and is assured enough to tell the tallest of tales (as in "My Daughter the Fox") and still achieve a note of emotional truth at the end. Kay, who is equally adept at poetry and longer fiction, has produced an original and moving collection.

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