‘Some Rain Must Fall’ by Michel Faber

This is the title story of Faber’s first collection of short pieces and it is a grenade. It works like a booby trap; or, rather, like one of those aposematic creatures that draw you towards them with their beauty before you realise, too late, that their iridescence is a warning, not a lure. The way it combines dismay at the brokenness of humanity with awe at its resilience and capacity for care and love is supremely, almost ecstatically done. I first read it alone in the corner of an Edinburgh pub, steaming with people sheltering from a storm: part of me is still there.

Published in Some Rain Must Fall and Other Stories, Canongate, 1998. Winner of the Ian St James Award

‘Serious Swimmers’ by Michel Faber

I chose this story as a complement to Kieron Pim’s choice last week of ‘The Swimmer’ by John Cheever. Here, Gail takes her estranged son Anthony out on a custody visit to the swimming pool, under the scrutiny of their social worker. The water givest hem a place to learn about each other, find freedom and a hint of shared joy.

Unlike Neddy Merrell’s liberated trip across the cracked tiles of American suburbia in ‘The Swimmer’, Gail is obliged to be poolside due to the choice of a higher power in the Australian social care system. Her visit is about being observed and tied down by her past choices. Neddy’s inner Narcissist has fallen in love with his own reflection in the water and forgotten about his friends and distant family. Gail’s downfall has been narcotics, and the swimming pool exposes her vulnerabilities. We encounter the floating sticking plaster of reality underneath the surface of Neddy’s pool, yet it offers us a glimmer of sunlight through Anthony’s innocent truth and the promise of a future bond together.

Pools are fab locations as they contrast the calming internal act of swimming with a place which (unless you live in the Hamptons) is usually a disagreeable municipal leisure centre, making it a great leveller and source of endless fun with a foam noodle.

First published in Prospect, January 2005, and available to read online here. Collected in The Fahrenheit Twins, Canongate, 2005. Picked by Hannah Piekarz. Hannah is a writer and researcher, also an occasional pharmacist

The 199 Steps by Michel Faber

I read this while I was in Whitby, and it was one of those rare moments where I allowed myself to experience the place and the writing as one. A kind of ghost story, a cunning mystery and a romance, it follows Sian, who joins an archaeological dig in the ruined Abbey, and who uncovers secrets that lead her into all sorts of unexpected danger. The town is entirely integral to the whole story, and the writing has a kind of energy and momentum that suggests Michel Faber was swept up in the place, much as Bram Stoker had been over a century before. His descriptions of running up those precarious stone steps has a kind of exhausting visceral quality that makes you crave your fish and chips even more.

First published by Canongate Books, 2001