[1] Andrew Michael Hurley in The Guardian writes that Hill "offers four new stories that occupy that place where the humdrum meets the horrific.

"The Front Room" sees an act of familial charity end in malicious retribution from beyond the grave.

In "Alice Baker", the arrival of a new office worker brings with it a series of strange events that are only explained when building work unearths a tragic incident from the past.

It feels more like indecision on the writer's part, as though she is still playing with ideas, and the story reads disappointingly like a first draft, in which voice, plot and structure have yet to be fully realised.

Even so, "Alice Baker", in which the women of a crumbling office block are haunted by a mysterious temp who lurks in the corner smelling "of rottenness and decay", and "The Front Room", in which a family welcome a malevolent elderly relative into their home, have their authentically unnerving moments.