These may be unfair stereotypes, but the writers in this anthology do little to challenge them. Instead, by sacrificing insight and complexity in favour of shallow affectations, they reinforce them: this is a book in which gimmicky bells and whistles, twist endings and ironic asides, and gobs of painstakingly described but thematically anorexic atmosphere and mood reign supreme. At the risk of trotting out a cliché of my own, there is an awful lot of style here (most of it borrowed from somewhere else) but little substance.

Disillusionment with the conventional domestic sphere is a recurring theme in much of the work (Isabelli Li’s ‘A Chinese Affair’, Sam Tyford-Moore’s ‘Phimosis: A Love Story’), as is racial and ethnic tension (Zahid Gamieldien’s ‘Looking Into a Beech Wood Shack’). Some even combine two by way of autobiographical reflection (Bonita Mason’s ‘Ancephaly’). The vast majority – fiction, non-fiction and poetry alike – while certainly never unreadable, ultimately suffers from the worst of afflictions: a paucity of ideas.