The Loudest Sound and Nothing

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.

The characters in Clare Wigfall's stories are all searching for something missing, something absent. As they live their seemingly ordinary lives, the dark undercurrent of life, with all its complications and imperfections, is gradually revealed. Extraordinarily compelling, incredibly skilled and pitch perfect in tone, these stories reveal Clare Wigfall to be a debut writer of enormous talent.