From the extraordinary mind of debut writer Ben Pester comes a book of stories in which the everyday – work, parents, friends – is not quite what it should be. Taken together, it forms a collection of things we are doing right now, in this lost and terrifying world we are gamely attempting to inhabit. Things like worshipping an imaginary being while trying to be productive; or slowly dying and having nothing to say about it except how tiring it was building the kitchen extension; or having hot martinis with the ambassador in a hotel that ought not to be there. Unsettling, original and occasionally monstrous, these are stories that light the contours of the ordinary world with a shimmering unreality.