<p>A teenager stares at his reflection and sees the Milky Way. A motorbike prowls and growls like a wild animal. A whale sings a song to end loneliness.</p><p>Philip Ridley’s collection of short stories – like his two adult novels, <em>Crocodilia</em> and <em>In the Eyes of Mr Fury</em> – became an instant cult classic when first published in 1990. Magical, poetic, heartbreaking and humorous, the sequence explores childhood, family life, romantic love in all its aspects – lost, unrequited, obsessional – and does so with a haunting mixture of both the barbaric and the beautiful that has become Ridley’s trademark. In particular, these tales deal with the experience of growing up gay in a world still bristling with prejudice, and they sing and howl with the need for equality and freedom.</p><p>This edition includes two new stories, “Alien Heart” and “Wonderful Insect”, and finally completes a seminal and compelling collection first begun over thirty years ago. </p><p>‘Ridley sets off a deliberate quiet and matter-of-fact prose against touches of glowing passion ...The stories achieve a startling variety. The power of the book as a whole, however, derives from the way in which these different voices blend in a single cry of frustration and regret.’ – <em>Times Literary Supplement.</em></p><p>‘Menace lurks in the shady corners of family life ... Chilling.’ – <em>Time Out</em></p><p>‘Ridley is a visionary.’ – <em>Rolling Stone</em></p>
