All shades of red burst out of short-story collection Oddbody from rising Irish author Rose Keating. Maroon, scarlet, cherry and even pink fill the mind’s eye and scorch your psyche, each of its ten tales delivering a fresh (or more accurately pungent) shock that ups the ante on the previous chapter’s jolt. Merging literary horror with gothic surrealism and injecting it straight into the vein marked ‘social conscience’, Keating doesn’t just deliver jarring thrills for their own sake; there is a point to the gore and a rationale behind the ickiness, as she fires a bazooka at societal norms and plants landmines underneath the patriarchy.

Arguably, the least bloodthirsty tale, ‘Notes On Performance’, is the one that hits home the hardest, aiming its shots towards the culture of film sets and male directors who have tortured and coerced vulnerable women for far too long. Even in this post-Weinstein world, you wonder how much has really changed. Across the book, men are forever seeking to maintain control, whether it’s the doctor in ‘Next To Cleanliness’ who prescribes a radical cleansing treatment to his female patients, or even the worm-dad in ‘Squirm’ who has effectively stolen his daughter’s life as she cares for a non-human who lives in a compost-filled bath; trips to a less than empathic vet don’t look like they will do much good either.

In something a little lighter such as ‘Bela Lugosi’s Not Dead’, the Hungarian-American star who fought a long and largely unsuccessful battle to shake off the typecasting he felt blighted his career as a serious actor just comes across as a bit of a douche. And the seemingly charming ghost who co-habits with Doireann in the eponymous yarn is no less a cad.

Throughout it all, few holds are barred as the body horror cranks up with an artist helping subjects literally step out of their skin or live with an attachment more suited to a bird; analysis of eating disorders in this book is more likely to feature someone crunching into and swallowing a mobile phone; by the time you reach an instalment about pregnancy or teeter towards a sheep-shearing scene, your mind might well have raced in retreat to a haunted corner. This may be the ultimate beauty of Keating’s writing. She puts just enough onto a page so that visceral reactions are wholly justified and expected. But the zones where that reader’s mind may be led off to outside of the story are just as terrifying. Add in the bite of savage satire and a stab of social commentary, and Oddbody becomes a collection that is as vital as it is vile.

Oddbody is published by Canongate on Thursday 3 July; main picture Christopher Orpen.