The common rat

He was my piano teacher. I was in love with him. One day we nearly did it to a tape of The Carnival of Animals. He committed suicide.

A sniper is shooting indiscriminately at people in their cars. In the suburbs the women get Red Riding Hood virus. A woman obsessed by cleaning and dirt drinks disinfectant, and another opens her door to a rat.

These twenty-nine stories and essays bring into strange focus the beauty, violence and irony of everyday life. Carmel Bird’s language is elegant, deadpan, and her dark fables of the last decade of the twentieth century delight and startle.