As is always the case with a collection of stories, I connected more with some than others but I truly enjoyed reading them all - which is quite rare for me. It's thrilling, and leaves so many questions that I want to go back to some of them and learn more and see how things turn out for them. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Stand up comedian Josie Long's short story collection came as a surprise, there is nothing in the way of an upbeat tone, instead what you get is an astute and observational eye on the darker and more unsettling aspects of life. Now I’m getting shit from the far right and Terfs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists],” she says – with her support for charity Mermaids making her a public target for anti-trans crusader Graham Linehan, before his eventual Twitter ban.

Each tale paints a life in miniature and offers an escape chute from the catastrophes of modern life. And between gigging, she’s also spent a decade presenting BBC’s award-winning mini documentary series Short Cuts, hosted a parenting podcast with her partner and fellow comedian Johnny Donahoe, and co-founded Arts Emergency, a vital charity helping young people into creative careers.I loved the little glimpses and vignettes into different worlds and different lives, but if anything the common theme seemed to be a huge underlying anxiety. From a comic mastermind comes this brilliant collection of comical, refreshing and often brilliantly relatable stories. It's the ability to create an authentic voice, and the way she can infuse a story with anger, heartache, heartbreak and wonder, all at the same time. All in all an engaging, sensitively written collection of stories which centre the female experience amid the horrors - but also joys - of modern life.

Long had written stories as a child, hammering them out on her dad’s word processor, printing them and carrying them around in a ring binder, later taking them to the pub to impress boys, but that was as far as her literary ambitions went.The last story, I don’t know was also not too bad but again I don’t know (hehe see what I did there) why? It was very provocative and unnerving at times how the one's presentation is manipulation or a defense mechanism and how one's thoughts do not equal what they expose to the world. Landlords aren’t thinking about the long term sustainability of the festival, or the fact that it helps breed wonderful culture in our country. About ten years ago I spoke to Canongate and said I would love to do this and they were so supportive but it took me another three years before I actually started.