The Cusp of Something by Jai Clare Subject: Speculative Fiction Publisher: Elastic Press (UK) Edition Our Price inc. p&p Status first edition paperback, A5, 191pp, ISBN 0955318130, 2008 UK only: £5.99 in stock (out of print with publisher)

Jai Clare is a courageously inventive writer whose short pieces are clever, ambitious, delightful and always surprising. Jim Crace, author of The Pesthouse

Jai Clare has understood the secret of the short story: lyricism, brevity, consequentiality. She brings to her writing an easy and deep-reaching grasp of character and a lovely open eroticism. She is a serious writer whom we are lucky to have. Sebastian Barker, editor of London Magazine

He stands at the threshold, feeling on the cusp of something and yet half empty and dizzy with visions and aromas. He feels solid and yet capable of flight. Hard and flimsy. There's something here, there's something he needs to know, to see. He steps forward.

Jai Clare's stories are filled with the disaffected, those who kick against their everyday lives, who crave the mystic when seeking their spirituality, and who are desperate to be alone as much as they are desperate to be with someone. Whether in North Africa, Greece, or Britain her characters' concerns remain the same. To find meaning in the universal and the personal, through transient sex or emotional depth. All told with a fluid intensity of prose that cuts to the heart of them, lays them bare to misfortune and fortune, and stands them waiting on the brink of discovery.