The house across the street has a single row of clear white lights along the eaves and it’s built close to the ground, cabin-style, with trees on all sides. Behind it, the trees erupt out of Shield rock that is nearly as tall as the apartment building in the
Naomi warned me this weekend: I knew immediately which one it was, the one with the dog’s body, broken and dragging itself home after it’s been shot. Since then, I’ve been thinking about how to write about this story without reading it again. And, so, I have started with
It’s a time of “political and intellectual crisis” in The Little Company. Sound familiar? Drusilla Modjeska’s introduction situates readers in Dark’s depiction of ordinary life in Sydney and Katoomba, in this time of “recession, nuclear threat and more failed expectations” in Australia. The Little Company is Dark’s seventh novel,
Betty Smith gave simple advice to writers: “First: Be understanding always. Keep the understanding you have and add on to it.” As the author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943)—a best-selling novel that challenged the myth of poverty as a choice, and allowed low/no-wage characters to demonstrate courage
Marion Poschmann’s The Pine Islands (2017; Trans. Jen Calleja 2020) was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2019. The jury describes it like this: “A quirky, unpredictable and darkly comic confrontation with mortality.” Her first book was published in Germany in 2002 and, since, her work has been
