If you’ve read Eley Williams ‘ award-winning and magnificent collection Attrib. and other stories and her hilarious debut novel The Liar’s Dictionary (which I can’t believe came out three years ago), you’ll know that Williams is an absurdist with a fascination (obsession) for the oddities and anomalies of the English language. If you haven’t, you could address the issue right now by picking up her excellent new collection: Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good. 

In a concise space—most of these stories are around two thousand words—Williams can capture her characters’ anxieties, obsessions, and concerns (however fleeting). Relationships are central to many of these pieces, whether it’s the after-effects of a break-up, such as the case in the opening story “Scrimshaw”, which has the great opening line: “Not knowing what else to do, I send you walruses”, or the disquieting and awkward “Message” where the narrator, despite being warned off, still plans to propose to their partner, or the astonishing title story, where a broadcaster delivering the shipping forecast breaks from the script to detail their recent, upsetting break-up.

Then there’s the weirder stuff, like the spooky “Tether” (“There was a white balloon and a strange man in my garden, neither one tethered to the other.”), and the even creepier and strange “Escape Room”, where the custodian of an Escape Room won’t let the latest group leave, and the bizarre, yawn (yes, yawn) inspired rules that make up “‘Positive Feedback’: A Game.”

And because this is Eley Williams, there’s a constant play with language, whether it’s ambiguous French phrases or obsessing over the meaning of words like “Ventifact” and “Dimity.”

These stories are filled with weirdness, joy, awkwardness, and curiosity. Eley Williams is a treasure, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.