Across thirty striking tales, Monika Radojevic weaves together the surreal with the everyday, confronting the experiences of contemporary womanhood with a tender ferocity shot through with humour.

A woman walks into a bar, and nobody notices. A newly married couple are punished for their childlessness with an unsettling nocturnal invasion. A girl trades her vocal cords for a chance at freedom. A door-to-door salesperson offers the antidote to women’s fear – but it comes at a high price.

Bubbling with an urgent rage that occasionally tips over into vengeance, Radojevic deftly charts the moments that make a life: from the warmth of first love to the recognition of anger, and the possibilities that take shape as we find or lose our ability to speak. A Beautiful Lack of Consequence explores the ways in which the world bends and breaks women with the pressure it puts on them – and what happens when those women snap back.

Moving and irreverent, dark and otherworldly, A Beautiful Lack of Consequence is a blazing debut collection from the winner of the #Merky Books New Writers’ Prize.