The Blue - Maggie Gee

I picked this up having enjoyed her novel "The Ice People", and found something very different - these stories are so short that they appear to have been distilled down to a single precisely expressed and often painful idea. Several themes - and even characters - recur through the collection; the ones that made most impression on me were those told from the perspective of a rather smug central character appearing to wilfully fail to notice the pain or troubles of someone 'different' who is attempting to communicate with them.