This collection cements Joanna Walsh s reputation as one of the sharpest writers of this century. Wearing her learning lightly, Walsh s stories make us see the world afresh while showing us she has read the world. In Like a Fish Needs a . . . - perhaps the funniest, most freewheeling story ever written about cycling (and Freud and and and . . .) you read shenanigans worthy of Flann O Brien. Meanwhile, in Worlds from the Word s End , Walsh conjures up a country in which words themselves fall out of fashion - something that will never happen wherever Walsh is read.