Eoin McNamee, Northern Irish writer from Kilkeel, County Down, whose novels are mostly based on real crimes (although his 2007 novel 12:23 was about the death of Princess Diana), The Comets, is his first collection of short fiction, which includes two novellas and 15 punchy shorts.

A fairground dodgems ride, “poles struck blue fire from the roof grid and the comets blazed across the rink”. In several stories an abandoned aerodrome acquires sinister, Ballardian quality. 

In “Walking North, Walking Home,” a woman, adopted in childhood, sets out to find her birth mother, but finds instead a kindred spirit in a taxi driver cast out by his in-laws. “Ellen nodded. Such things happened. Generations were laid waste in the Badlands of family.”  The two encounter a woman even more desperate, wandering along the middle of the road. “They knew that the woman would never be hit by a car. That an uncomplicated fare did not await her.”

In “The Road Wife”, journeys are repeated for a long distance truck driver who is made a blunt offer by a colleague. “I got something to keep you warm. I got a girl in the cab”. The driver, Coyle succumbs almost reluctantly – “ I suppose men like me like to talk.” “No,” the girl said, “they like to have sex” – and finds himself taking responsibility for her when he discovers she’s pregnant.

The novella “The Last of Deeds” is no less succinct than the shorter stories. He came home every night from the pub using both sides of the road”. The story is about a young Catholic man who gets involved with a Protestant girl, to the fury of her community: “this is our town, kid, and she belongs to us”. Mayhem in both directions ensures, awful for everyone involved except the reader. At one point, during a burial, the grave fills with water and then the coffin began to rise again”. 

A frosty northern witch changes the life of a twelve-year-old girl by teaching her that women keep their dreams in their hair. The wondrous souls of the dead become bright comets arcing over a seaside town. A girl on fire runs through the snow, and a woman on the run is transformed into an ice queen by her own will. Lives unravel and are remade and if they are lost they are lost to beauty.

The Comets: Collected Short Fiction by Eoin McNamee, Riverrun £20, 224 pages.