Aimee Bender’s debut short-story collection shows a writer ready to flirt with the fantastical. Largely concerned with the love lives of young metropolitans and desperate housewives, her cheerily bizarre scenarios give romance a fresh twist … Bender is a writer with a very incendiary turn of phrase.

These stories are unusual, certainly and they take you inside people’s feelings. Bender gets you to see the world in very particular ways. Beautifully done; you won’t forget this.

Hilarious, deep and a little bit dirty

Many of the stories in The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, begin with a premise just on the fringe of the familiar, then give it a tantalising twist ... Bender's stories are powered be voice - by pleasure of an electric simile and a restrained sauciness

Fierce and true ... Fantastic!

Makes you grateful for the very existence of language

Bender has hit the ground running with this debut

Magical … a collection of mesmerisingly imaginative tales

Ample proof of her pre-eminent brilliance in the short form…her acute probing of malfunctioning relationships are both provocative and highly entertaining

I found her stories just as hard to put down as I used to; and repeated exposure to them just makes one appreciate the artistry even more… Simpson keeps her eyes open to what is around her, as well as to what is within her characters. It's the kind of detail that makes us wish she would hurry up so that we can read her thoughts about what's going on right now, the precise contours of our present anxieties. I suspect that she will have much to say, and be able to say it very well

A compact insight into the acclaimed writers work

Simpson, to my mind, is one of the best contemporary chroniclers of womanhood that I’ve read. She manages to get under the skin of her characters in a way that makes you feel you know them and completely understand their anxieties, at each point in their lives

She’s a genius at noticing and listening

Unexpected tales, perfectly pitched…suggesting Simpson sprand fully formed when she began writing

The great thing about Helen Simpson – or one of the great things – is that she pins people down so beautifully…her phrases sparkle

Simpson's meticulous fragments of contemporary self-delusion make beautiful narrative shapes out of the ordinary horrors of domestic life