"You'd be surprised what goes on in young girls' heads," says the back-cover blurb on this collection of fifteen short stories by a writer who is being promoted as one of Ireland's most promising.
Repelled, more like, on the evidence of the more strident of the voices contained within these two hundred or so pages: it's becoming all too familiar, isn't it, the ultra-aggressive voice of girl power, and it would be a pity if Katy Hayes were to be typecast as the Alanis Morrissette of Irish fiction, because when she abandons the role and stretches her net wider, as she does in "Audition" and "Getting Rid of Him", she can produce a top-class piece of writing, and when she applies herself to fixing in words the shifting sands of a relationship, as she does in "Stepford" - no f-words, no slaggin' - she moves into a higher gear altogether.