The Loudest Sound and Nothing Clare Wigfall Faber & Faber, 224pp, £12.99

Clare Wigfall’s debut collection of short stories stretches over a broad canvas: from a besieged 1870s Paris, to the Arizona desert, to an island off the coast of Scotland. “Folks Like Us” is a homage to Bonnie and Clyde; “My Brain” is set in a Sichuanese restaurant in New York, where a disastrous meeting between a young man’s girlfriend and his mother unfolds; “Pale Green Walls” takes us inside the world of a mute child who defaces the image of Christ.

In spite of the diversity of time, place and narrative voice, these stories carry unifying undercurrents – dark, unsettling, occasionally macabre ones. Most convey a sense of unexpressed loneliness, and many have no real resolution. The ambiguity works well – and although Wigfall can get weighed down in overly precise descriptions, her prose is for the most part terse and evocative. Perhaps the best in the collection is “Caro at the Pool”, a brief snapshot of a young teenager in the company of a much older man. In fewer than three pages, Wigfall alludes to strife, jealousies and dangers.

She is an impressively mature and nuanced writer, skilled at harnessing the power of suggestion, and understands that silence can often convey more than words.

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