The best thing about tapas is that you get to taste a bit of everything and avoid getting lumbered with a main course the menu lied about. Comma's latest compilation of short stories, or 'short fiction' if you feel 'stories' sounds a bit Beano annual, is a treat for the literary equivalent of foodies everywhere ('shorties'?).

20 stories, from the grimly comical to the lip-quiveringly sad, have been creamed off from the crop of dozens of Bright Young Things - some dewy-eyed creative writing students, others already within sniffing distance of a publishing deal and a slot on 'The Culture Show'.

Short stories seem peculiarly suited to providing voyeuristic glimpses of strangers' lives. Gone in the morning like a one-night stand, they leave just a taste, good or bad, in the mouth. Bracket's pages are populated by characters who have only a few pages to learn something about themselves or the world, so the pace is quick and the lessons harsh. Ever wondered what a concrete block landing on a pelvis sounds like? Or what you'd do on the last day before a meteorite hit the earth? The stories told here share a modern melancholy that verges on the gothic, but more often than not the beautiful writing catches the reader before they fall into the black.

If you were hoping someone would introduce you to an achingly cool new author this Christmas, and all you got from Santa was a copy of The Da Vinci Code or Delia Smith's One is Fun, get with the zeitgeist and buy yourself a copy of Bracket. The young tykes who wrote it will get tuppence in royalties, which just might go towards paying their Prozac bills.