Living on the edge

True to its title, the subject matters of the stories are serious and often devastating. Several deal with the loss of innocence and children forced to deal with adult situations.

In ‘Bleeding Boy’, the narrator buries his sorrow at the death of his own mother in the sexual idealisation of the other mothers of the neighbourhood. As in several of the stories in Psychotic Episodes, what begins as light-hearted uncovers pain and damage underneath. The first story in the collection is typical: the whimsy of a couple’s babysitting is unravelled in one heartbreaking sentence in reference to the son they never had. “And, later again, in the soundless hours, when we catch ourselves not sleeping, and we ask each other where on earth he could be on this quiet night, it’s then that it hits us: that though he never cries, he has our hearts broken.”