Maria Fusco is one on the wittiest, most adroit and vibrant writers in the UK. Yes, that’s a good word for her—‘adroit’. Fusco started as a practising artist before switching to writing and now writes with ease across disciplines. ‘The Hare’s Course’ is the opening story of her debut collection of stories The Mechanical Copula. It’s a difficult story to sum up. It starts and ends with vomit. It seems to be about the ASMR-like quality to wrapping presents or doing the ironing. Maybe the story itself is an ASMR. It could be about the digestive system. Or OCD. Perhaps it’s a story about being in the wrong relationship, or a story about ‘the sort of people who care more about what’s on the outside than on the inside’. Who knows? Magnificent.

In The Mechanical Copula, Sternberg Press, 2010