A teenager stares at his reflection and sees the Milky Way. A motorbike prowls and growls like a wild animal. A whale sings a song to end loneliness.

A teenager stares at his reflection and sees the Milky Way. A motorbike prowls and growls like a wild animal. A whale sings a song to end loneliness.

Philip Ridley's collection of short stories - like his two earlier adult novels, Crocodilia and In the Eyes of Mr Fury - became an instant cult classic when first published in 1990. Magical, poetic, heartbreaking and humorous, the sequence explores childhood, family life, romantic love in all its aspects - lost, unrequited, obsessional - and does so with a haunting mixture of both the barbaric and the beautiful that has become Ridley's trademark.

In particular, these tales deal with the experience of growing up gay in a world still bristling with prejudice, and they sing and howl with the need for equality and freedom.