Poet-turned-thriller writer Sophie Hannah's new collection, Pessimism for Beginners (Carcanet, £8.95), is a knowing assault on the iniquities of love - playful, funny and not always as simple as it seems.
The pessimism of the title is a reluctant defence mechanism for those who don't dare to hope, scared by the prospect of emotional ruin: ''Praise you deserve, that I would love to give,/I will withhold.'' Hannah's female voices are always trapped, mocked and wrongfooted by their own desires, but she gives gentle hints that writing may be a way to triumph: ''At the moment I still prefer you/To the poems I've written about you./I expect this won't always be true.''
