Description
Longlisted in this year’s Edge Hill Short Story Prize
A desperate mother buys a love potion to win back her daughter’s affection. An actress has a forbidden encounter with her animal body double. An idyllic new home comes with an unexpected lodger – a poltergeist.
Exploring themes of desire, womanhood, and obsession, Abi Hynes’ collection of short stories is sometimes funny, sometimes uncanny, but never too far from the truth.
PRAISE FOR MONSTROUS LONGING
“A wonderful, heady brew. Deft, incisive and compulsive. This collection kept me reading long into the early hours of the morning.” ~ Irenosen Okojie
“Monstrously good. I highly recommend this.” ~ Priya Sharma
“This collection has renewed my faith in everything the short story can be. With the seductive confidence of a writer who trusts in language and in voice, Hynes introduces us to worlds peopled – and creatured – with so many varieties of monster and so many varieties of longing. These fictions will leave you reeling, wanting both to pause and gasp for breath, and to rush forward and devour every word. I counsel you to take your time. These are stories worth savouring.” ~ Tania Hershman
Abi Hynes is an award-winning drama and fiction writer based in Manchester. Her short stories have been published widely in print and online, including in Black Static and Interzone, and in short fiction anthologies from Boudicca Press, Fairlight Books and Splice. She won the Cambridge Short Story Prize in 2020, and was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction ‘Novella in Flash’ Award in 2017.
Her plays have been performed across the UK, and she has written four episodes of historical audio drama DARK HARBOUR. She also writes for TV, and her script LONG LOST was on the Brit List in 2022.