Thomas Morris’s world is a twilit psychoscape, a blasted nether realm populated by absent fathers, failed relationships and anxious, haunted, mirror-twitching young men. As he leads you through this suite of five stories, you realise it’s not even that. Open Up is truly a descent into an underworld, each story darker and more punishing than the last. In fact, Morris’s strike rate has an inverse relationship to his conventionality. He is most boring when he is doing ‘relatable’ stuff and – like Will Self or J G Ballard – most exciting when he is bending form and taste to the demands of his crepuscular imagination.

‘Wales’ is a throwaway opener, a weightless narrative about Euro 2016 and a young boy going to his first football match that reads like it was commissioned by the Welsh FA. The second, ‘Aberkariad’, is more ambitious but leaves little trace in the imagination, taking the form of a bleak parable about commitment and hook-up culture set in a fantastical environment (an underwater family of sea horses). There is a sense of constraint and tedium to this pair, of Morris being far from his home terrain – his discomfort zone.

But the collection is saved by its three far stronger follow-ups. Thematically linked, they give a sense of what really pops Morris’s toast. Meet Morris’s provincial male wretches, who advance, in a grisly triptych of stories, from miserable to damaged to royally fucked up. First there’s Mike. He