The Beautiful Indifference is not an easy collection: in its pages are contained moments of pain, heartache and anxiety.  Neither, in the strictest sense, is it a perfect one. The stories are not consistently well-plotted and in some stories there are moments – that slightly jar. But what Sarah Hall, lacks in suspense-building she makes up for with language that can only be described as exquisite.

She is a poet, playing with rhymes and sounds. In 'Bees', the phrase "Is it something to do with infected hives? Mites in their throats or pesticides?" requires a reader to glance back, to think, and to marvel. In 'Butcher's Perfume', she says of one character that, when in the grips of a fight, "she was lit up, the way someone plain looks better when they sing, when suddenly it seems they have bright colours under a dull wing." Her short sharp sentences simultaneously capture urgency and control; her life observations are intense and occasionally wince-inducing.

In ‘She Murdered Mortal He’, a woman contemplates the man who has spurned her: “maybe he was asleep; oblivious to everything, making use of that shut-off mechanism men could rely upon”. I can’t say that I felt an engagement with every character; “You”, the protagonist of ‘Bees’, struggles to feel like “me”.

But I am anxious to justify my star rating. The collection's flaws, necessarily emphasised in a review, are minor. And what is the 5th star for except to reward writing that takes your breath away?

Faber and Faber, £12.99, paperback