I don’t care what any of these nipple Nazis say. For example, in ‘Five-Dollar Family’ set in a maternity ward, one new mother says to another, ‘I’m putting him straight onto formula.

Some passages actually made me laugh out loud. Eliot: ‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality.’īut the sun occasionally breaks through, with rays of warmth, tenderness and humour. After reading several in a row, I ended up feeling like Tyler in the final story ‘Seventy-Two Derwents’ – ‘like I had a stone inside my stomach.’ To quote from another celebrated writer, T.S. I should have known when I read the epigraph by Franz Kafka – ‘In the fight between you and the world, back the world’ – that this collection wasn’t going to be a picnic in the park.Īs other reviewers have suggested, it’s best not to read all these stories in one sitting. Lack of love, money, resources, security, stability. Loss of love, life, youth, health, innocence, dreams. Quite frankly, I am in awe of her talents – she is a master of the craft.īut in other respects it was also an extremely difficult book, because the stories, in one way or another, all deal with LOSS and LACK. Her characters and their everyday lives are real and recognisable.

Kennedy’s images are drawn with pinpoint precision and her dialogue is equally brilliant. The stories are simply structured, clear and well paced, with enough detail to draw you into the world of the story but not too much that you’re bogged down in dense description. In one respect, this was a very easy book to read. Her latest book is The Taste of River Water: New and Selected Poems by Cate Kennedy, which was published in May 2011 and won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry.Ĭate Kennedy’s The World Beneath (2009) is one of my favourite Australian novels, so I was eager to read her latest volume of short stories – Like a House on Fire – recently shortlisted for the inaugural Stella Prize. Cate is also the author of the travel memoir Sing, and Don’t Cry, and the poetry collections Joyflight and Signs of Other Fires. Her collection, Dark Roots, was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. She is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has twice won The Age Short Story Competition and has appeared in a range of publications, including The New Yorker. It was also shortlisted for The Age fiction prize 2010 and the ASA Barbara Jefferis Award 2010, among others. She is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won the People’s Choice Award in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2010. She graduated from University of Canberra and has also taught at several colleges, including The University of Melbourne. Cate Kennedy is an Australian author based in Victoria.

Like a house on fire by cate kennedy