To read Words from a Glass Bubble by the Welsh author Vanessa Gebbie is like having a talk with your most intimate and yet secret friend, a companion that will take you deep into its soul white at the same time touching yours.

The stories in Gebbie's collection are like bubbles within bubbles, magical and multilayered. Simple, mundane lives of her characters ooze emotive richness, often against the background of Biblical contexts, which Gebbie truly brings down to earth and explores in their e...