This wonderful collection of short stories from Australia is aptly endorsed in the quotes on the back of the book:"sly, seductive, and surprising"
"talent for the comic and the chilling"
"clear-eyed, unsentimental empathy"
"a feeling for the precise moment when stars move in the cosmos"
"funny, wise, and achingly sad"
"incredibly spare and gifted writing"
What can I add? The stories differ widely, yet almost all of them deliver a little jolt at the end. I would be seeing a situation one way, and then suddenly have my perspective altered. This could have been unsettling, except the endings were just so fitting, it was more like an a-ha! feeling. A very good reading experience.
In fairness to the US publisher of Cate Kennedy's book - Black Cat imprint of Grove/Atlantic - and since I've ranted about Americanized editions in the past, I should have mentioned that I was pleased to find the Australian setting and vocabulary hadn't been tampered with (words like doona, paddock and kilometres). (See my reviews of Beautiful Malice or Mac Slater Hunts the Cool.)
ReplyDeletehttp://lindypratch.blogspot.com/2010/11/beautiful-malice-by-rebecca-james.html
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