What Becomes, By AL Kennedy

AL Kennedy's latest collection of short stories (her fifth) is a virtuoso performance. Its 12 stories cover a wide range of contemporary situations: a group of maimed army veterans go swimming together; a professional couple lose their income and their love for each other; a woman tries to escape her thoughts in a flotation tank. What all have in common is superb, but unshow-offy technique.

In "Edinburgh", a perfect, piercing study of loneliness, a greengrocer deals with rude customers and feckless assistants while wistfully remembering the one night he spent with his lost love. I never thought a sharon fruit could have such significance. The story "Sympathy" is a tour de force – an account of a casual pick-up in a hotel told entirely in dialogue. And with whom are we supposed to sympathise? The answer is both of them.

Kennedy's own generous sympathies extend to all her characters, no matter how damaged or damaging they are. She has a natural feeling for anyone who is lonely, trapped, despairing or grieving. But her stories are enlivened by a bitter humour, and full of wry, economical lines such as: "Paul didn't much like games – they made him lose." Another technique she uses to excellent effect is the delayed reveal – the crucial fact which comes late in the story and illuminates everything that went before.

Her style is simple and supple, and, without seeming to make any effort at it, she applies words in an offbeat, original, but always accurate way: laughter is "a punch of sound"; a woman neither walks nor runs but moves in "a driven scamper"; wasps are like "very tiny toys"; the weather is "spiteful". She is also an expert in the art of swearing.

This is a collection of stories that will bear re-reading exceptionally well, like an album of brilliant songs you keep wanting to hear again.