Dismantle your genome and you’ll find you have the same building blocks as that rat…What differs…is the pieces chosen and the order they’re stacked in.”

As pick-up lines go, this one, taken from one of the short stories in Neil Smith’s Bang Crunch, is unlikely. But then again, everything about Bang Crunch is unlikely. Smith didn’t begin writing fiction until later in life, without formal training. The book—his first—unexpectedly rode an unlikely current of critical praise to an unlikely publication around the world. Even the characters in Bang Crunch are unlikely, ranging from a glow-in-the-dark guinea pig to a girl whose aging follows the pattern of a palindrome to a curling stone filled with the ashes of a dead man who still speaks with his wife, herself a recovering alcoholic with a Lucille Ball fixation.

Smith’s writing is a symmetry of clarity and cleverness, flowing with ease and wit. His oddball stories glow with a familiar light without ever seeming familiar; if you’ve ever passed someone on the street that you never met yet felt strongly connected to, it’s the same effect here. The stories illustrate the hidden (or often unseen) depths of their seemingly simple subjects. This template may be commonplace, but the results here are anything but: they are exceptional and engrossing. By writing his characters without judging them, these potentially outlandish tales—“Isolettes” is about a disinterested first-time mother who couldn’t care less if her premature firstborn child lives or dies; “Extremities” is a passionate, bizarre love story about a cashmere glove and a severed foot—become easily relatable, affirming the simplest human experiences, like disillusionment, humility and the search for home.

Everything about Bang Crunch is unlikely. Sometimes unlikely is what you’ve been looking for all along. Give it a chance and you’ll see.