The Smiths, purveyors of jangly pop perfection, are the ideal candidate for a fiction anthology: witty, literate, sardonic and the musical saviours of innumerable adolescents for decades. In Paint a Vulgar Picture: Fiction Inspired by The Smiths, Peter Wild has compiled a series of short stories each using a different Smiths song title as their starting off point. As I was reading through this, I was a bit underwhelmed. Most of the stories seemed a bit lackluster, not terrible, just painfully average. Perhaps writing openly inspired by such an iconic and influential band can only invite comparison to the golden wit evident in the songs they reference. Instead of reading on I’d put the book down and listen to the Smiths. About halfway through the collection a quartet of great stories rose above the rest, and after having thought I wouldn’t be able to find a single story in Paint a Vulgar Picture to write about, I had a shortlist of four great stories to choose from. After reading and rereading the stories I liked, I’ve decided upon James Hopkin’s “Jeane” for this weeks Soiree.

But nostalgia is a form of tenderness, isn’t it? It comes sewn with soft regrets. And it’s strange: even when we were together, Jeane, I was always looking for you.

“Jeane” captured the same sort of desire to belong, if only with one other person or to one particular place, that the Smiths always aroused in me. It is the nostalgic remembrance of a young woman named, you guessed it, Jeane, from the perspective of a unnamed narrator. Written in an ambling, melodious prose addressed to Jeane, the narrator recounts his days spent with Jeane in her underground flat, in their local pub and following her to the backstreets of Berlin, eventually losing track of her and daydreaming about the possibilities of her current whereabouts. The lack of closure and the absence of finality ensuring they are forever entwined, at least in the narrators strongly evocative memories of Jeane.

Jeane herself is something of a spitfire, a tough brazen Northern girl who spouts off in rages against anything she sees unfit for her ideal world, the university secretary, righteous journalists, ignorant students. Even bouncing off Morrissey’s lyrics – “but it will never be clean” – Jeane goes on cleaning rampages while our narrator watches, wondering whether she is attempting to erase herself in the process. If Jeane is trying to remove herself from her surroundings, the narrator is unable to remove her from his consciousness, while at the same time recognizing the distance that existed between them when they were together.

So, tell me, Jeane, when was it that you began to disappear? Or did I simply start looking for you more? ‘I don’t do love,’ you told me, the first time you kicked me out. You went spiky, your hair, your shoulders, all of you shaping like a flint-edged projectile about to be flung. ‘And I don’t do people. And you are a people.’

I really liked “Jeane”, the imagery of the story has stuck with me for days, and it has urged me to seek out more fiction by James Hopkin. His debut novel, Winter Under Water, sounds like it runs along very similar lines, at least in terms of narrative: “When Joseph meets Marta, who has come to the UK to research the forgotten histories of remarkable women from across Europe, he is captivated, and Marta feels the same; when she returns to her previous life, their relationship continues through letters and phone calls. Then Joseph decides to visit Marta in her native Poland.” His writing style may not be for everyone – the focus is on style and moments of everyday beauty rather than story or plot – but it sunk its hooks into me and I’m looking forward to reading more of Hopkin’s work.

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Here’s the original version of “Jeane”, a b-side to “This Charming Man”; an acoustic version with Sandie Shaw, 1967 Eurovision Song Contest winner and renowned pop idol of both Morrissey and Johnny Marr, on vocals; and finally a cover by Pete Doherty, of the Libertines and Babyshambles, covering “Jeane” in his own shambolic, rambling way.