What a lovely little book this is. Having inured myself to opening self-published books only to find spelling errors, slipshod typesetting, poor binding, and so on, it was a pleasure to find one of those rare books that have clearly been planned down to the last detail. The author cannot always take full credit for this, but I suspect that, in Kirsten Schmidt's case, much tender loving care has come from her direction. The result is that, even if the contents were unremarkable, the reader would be predisposed to enjoy Ms Schmidt's short stories and, like me, would end by putting the book carefully away on a shelf, with no thought at all of the Oxfam shop.

To begin with, there's the cover. Modern, certainly -- the girl in the picture couldn't be mistaken for a girl from any decade earlier than the 1990s. The pink tones give the conventional image its extra appeal. Not a cover designed to appeal to the male reader, I have to say (or at any rate, not with the intention of looking inside), but nevertheless one of the best I've seen on a self-published book.

I keep saying "self-published", without actually being sure that Iceni Books isn't a commercial publisher. The thinness of the volume, more like a book of poetry than short stories in appearance, makes one suspect that the contents actually represent the whole of Kirsten Schmidt's literary output. "Literary" it certainly is, perhaps composed as a creative writing exercise, one that turned out so well as to lead to the idea of publication. There's nothing wrong with that, only I was hungry for more. Ms Schmidt's writing has a delicate, lyrical beauty, combined with an imaginative power that lead you unsuspectingly onwards. Unlike many modern short stories, which deal with a single character or state of mind, those contained in Stilled have a beginning, a middle and an end -- albeit not always in that order.

This attention to detail that I mentioned in relation to the book's physical appearance is a trait that offers a key to the content. The theme that ties the three stories together is that of "the self", but it is a self represented from different viewpoints. Of the three, only the second story, Mary, has the twist-ending characteristic of the genre, and I liked the touch of humour -- something I found lacking in the other two. In fact, the title story which opens the book, despite (or perhaps because of) being far longer than the others, does not have the same punch. On the other hand, anyone who delves into the soul of the individual can expect a mixed outcome, in emotional terms. Introspection seems to be this author's specialism, and a perfectly valid one it is.