Uncovered ¦ The Gizmo Again

Uncovered is Jennings' latest collection of short, intense and surreal stories. The writing is as shiningly lucid and as faultlessly paced as ever, and the bizarre humour which makes his previous stories so irresistible is just as outrageous. In 'A Mouthful', for example, a girl and her friend conspire to make a painfully playful parent eat a mouthful of cat dung. But in this collection Jennings seems to be turning to weightier and more risky themes. The first story deals with the relationship between a dying boy and his autistic brother, another deals with incontinence, and the finale is an excruciating account of tormenting adolescent embarrassment.

The Gizmo Again, a sequel to an earlier book about the tiny machine that brings nemesis upon its bearers, contains similar episodes of extreme tackiness: the gizmo shrinks a bully to the size of a doll, whereupon he's peed on by neighbourhood dogs, licked clean by a child, then force-fed a mix of playdough and saliva.

In both books, serious issues are dealt with in ways that are both morally unflinching and hysterically funny. I can't think of a better recommendation than that.