I WAS amused by the recent viral photograph of a bookshop chalkboard reading: “Fiction … because real life is terrible” but the three books I’ve chosen as reads of the year have led me to reject its premise. All fiction, all enjoyable, but none providing an escape from the rigours of reality.

Discontent and wonder collide to astonishing effect in Claire Dean’s The Museum of Shadows and Reflections (Unsettling Wonder). Her first collection of short fiction is a visionary map of overlooked lives and erased communities, with some stories set in dying northern towns and others in the fading glamour of down-at-heel seaside resorts. Some characters explore strange emporia, others wander dreamlike vistas of beauty and menace. These tales of creation and transformation feature a dress made from stories, a splintering princess, sentient marionettes and a drowned village with a surreal afterlife.

Dean’s writing is subtle, supple and precise and her contemporary fairy tales are profound reflections on identity, alienation and loss.