Oh, the worlds of Michel Faber, what a funny bunch they are. Some time after reading Tabitha Warren, it suddenly occurs to me in a little puff of realisation that its female character, the ageing lady novelist who crawls across the carpet on all fours and, crouching, produces an acrid smell like cat piss is, quite possibly, a cat. Such is the state of affairs in Faberville; anything is possible. And such is the other thing about these stories — their ability to get to you and stay with you. So don’t be surprised if the mouse in Mouse comes back to revisit you.

Faber toys with you; just when you’re breathless, like a little furry, nerves-a-jangling creature transfixed by some grisly vision, you suddenly get a glimpse of him, the man behind the horror, laughing at you. And why not? Not only can he scare the bejesus out of you (don’t read the baby-dropping nastiness The Smallness of the Action when emotionally fragile), he can also make your heart swell (just try to be unmoved by Beyond Pain). And then there are the characters who, in even the briefest glimpse, are defiantly real. Like the fat nurse in The Safehouse who, dishing up dinner so that a ring of potato encloses a dollop of stew, smiles wanly as she hands it over “as if she just can’t help being a bit creative with the presentation”.

Faber’s taste for horror (this is, after all, the man who gave us Under the Skin) and a mischievousness that sometimes slips into sadism, doesn’t mean that reading The Fahrenheit Twins cannot also soothe. And if that sounds like a style-spectrum too wide, think again. From the beginning of The Safehouse, the opening story, where the protagonist wakes up with the thought that his wife cannot forgive him, “never, ever”, and, then remembers that he doesn’t have a wife any more, expect that lovely mental exhalation that comes from knowing you are in good hands. And anyway, Faber-vision is nothing if not multi-faceted.

Here reality and fantasy lie in a loving clinch. So much so that it’s hard to be impassive in the face of the various weirdness and loveliness on offer. As with the eponymous twins who “knew no better than that life was bliss. Therefore, it was bliss”, it quickly dawns on you that any delineation between how things seem and how things are is no longer valid. When Faber sucks you into whatever world he’s created, the gap between reality and fantasy closes and — hey presto! — you find yourself clawing to get out of a world which doesn’t actually exist. Problematic. So laugh away, Mr Faber, for you have officially got under our skin. And quite right too; what else do you want from a short story than a little threat and menace? Raymond Carver would be wetting his knickers.

Canongate, £12.99; 256pp
£11.69 (free p&p)
0870 1608080
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