These stories which have never been brought together before are taken from Joan Aiken's earliest writing years in the 1950s and 1960s when she was working for the English short story magazine, Argosy where they were first published. They demonstrate her wide ranging stylistic ability, with subjects as diverse as a rented apartment that comes with a resident swan, a man who buys a girl in a crystal ball, an invisible man-eating tiger, or a psychiatric patient who can always, sometimes unfortunately, conjure up a 93 London bus. All these ideas seem to pour out of an endless imagination, making bold use of eccentric and unexpected settings and characters, and at the same time demonstrating an evident delight in parodying a variety of literary styles from gothic to comedy, fantasy to folk tales selected from her incredible reading background. But Joan Aiken always repudiated the suggestion that she was "a born storyteller" she would always argue furiously that it was a craft, like oil painting or cabinet making that she had learned, practiced and developed over the years. She described this period of her life as a single-minded engagement with the writer's craft; and her grasp of the short story form as the foundation of her literary career. What is far from apparent from these wildly inventive and freewheeling tales, is that this was in fact a bitterly difficult period of Joan Aiken's life, when not long after the end of the Second World War she was left widowed and homeless with two young children. Having made the brave decision to try and support herself and her family by writing, she applied for a job on this popular short story magazine. In many ways, as she often said subsequently, this period spent working at Argosy could not have been bettered, both as a wonderful distraction and consolation during a bad time, and as an unbeatable apprenticeship in the craft of writing.

ジョーン・エイキンが「職人」として練り上げた短編群には、奔放な想像力と精緻な文体模写が同居しています。ゴシックから民話までを自在に横断する筆致は、アパートに住まう白鳥や水晶玉の少女といった奇想に、揺るぎない実在感を与えます。彼女が磨き上げた「物語の技法」がもたらす魔術的な陶酔は、読者の理性を鮮やかに裏切るでしょう。 これらの物語は、戦後の困窮という過酷な現実の中で、生を繋ぐための「切実な武器」として紡がれました。ユーモアの裏側には人間の孤独や強靭な生命力が通底しており、単なる空想を超えた文学的な深淵が広がっています。苦難を創造性へと転換したエイキンの魂の輝きが、一編ごとに結晶化している珠玉の短編集です。