The Loudest Sound and Nothing by Clare Wigfall

The short story remains an obscure form in this country, and it was from a suitably obscure position (facepainting, Prague) that Clare Wigfall was rescued when she won £15,000 from the inaugural BBC Short Story Award last month. The Numbers, the first tale in this absorbing collection, was victorious, and you can see why.

A bleak evocation of an outer- Hebridean community in the 1930s, its power lies in its thrilling ambiguities. You could pencil a novel in Wigfall's blank spaces. The washes of colour vary from story to story — a sad one-night stand in Epsom, a swanky party in LA — but all share a wry, poised melancholy. Addictive..

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

One long hot summer, Evelyn drowns a wasps' nest, and while digging among the tiny corpses makes a sinister discovery. A university professor arrives unannounced at the door of an Arizona fortune-teller, little knowing how this woman will alter his life. A sudden spate of disappearing newborns terrifies a young mother. As the Prussian army encroaches, the besieged city of Paris asks an enormous sacrifice of its city zookeeper. And over a Coca-Cola in an Andalucian village bar, a woman hears from a stranger the worst thing a mother can do.