Edition 26
Stories for Today
- Published 1st December, 2009
- ISBN: 9781921520860
- Extent: 264 pp
- Paperback (234 x 153mm)
Stories for Today, a special summer fiction edition, presents a fresh and candid reinterpretation of the Australian character, with stories from the writers who are making an impact at home and overseas.
Voices from home and the Australian diaspora explore the impact of migration, easy movement, pandemics, recession, connection with Asia, the service economy and more.
Just as fiction provided the enduring images and notions of Australia at other key points in our history so we need stories to do this today. Articulating the new values – sustainability, tolerance and accountability – shouldn’t be left to the politicians and advertisers but is something artists and writers are equipped to explore and express.
This edition will also feature a series of short essays commissioned from leading writers who will engage with questions about why writing fiction matters, how it differs from other forms of communication and what it contributes to our culture and understanding of ourselves.
In this Edition
Pretence, sincerity, convention
RECENTLY I HAD an eyelash transplant. Hairs were taken from the back of my neck and placed across the edge of my otherwise bald eyelids. Since adolescence I have suffered from a condition known as trichotillomania. It is a compulsive-behaviour disorder involving pulling hair...
East of the sun and west of the moon
THE NEW GIRLS is a 1979 novel by Beth Gutcheon. It relates the lives of five teenage girls, students of an expensive and exclusive girls' boarding school in New England, USA, in the 1960s, and is not a pretty story. It is a fictional exploration and...
The writer in a time of change
A WHILE AGO I went to a lecture on geothermal power. Afterwards I got talking to the man sitting next to me, a retired professor of physics. When I told him I was a writer, his face lit up. A writer? Ah, you're the...
Fact and fiction
SO THERE I was, an outsider at the global epicentre of men with bushy beards and cardigans. They were enthusiasts who knew all about gramophones from the earliest days of recorded music. I had stumbled across them because I was working on a novel...
Notes on unbelonging
‘HE HAD THE sagacity to realise that, once he was out of Australia, the colours would gradually bleed from his palette, as they have from the palettes of so many Australian writers self-exiled in England.'– Francis King on Patrick White DAD'S WORKING DOWN the pit....
Four shots at silence
1HIGH STREET, PRAHRAN. An ageing Toyota Corolla heads through drizzle for Punt Road. Once past Chapel Street the driver hesitantly encroaches on the tram tracks – signalling his intention to swing right into St Edmonds Road at the Zaks Gymnasium corner – and comes...
The silent majority
IT IS A truth universally acknowledged, Jo decided, that a bored teenager with a permanent marker is a pain in the bloody neck. And if it isn't, then it fucken well should be. For here came five-year-old Timbo wandering up the hill, his bare...
Finding Girrawandi
WHEN HE EMERGED from the rainforest after he, his brothers and father had set out eight months before, Simon O'Conner seemed half man, half beast. His skin was browned by the sun and dirt and shiny with horse fat, his head was covered in...
The colour of death
SOME PEOPLE LOSE perspective regardless of the occasion. Brigit is prowling at the edges of Loney Tonkin's funeral and fashion-minded mourners are decked out in black for the occasion, like race day without the colour. Expensive black, and most of it looks pretty new...
The red wheelbarrow
I HEARD A growl, deep and low, and then a yelp. I had been lying awake – I always tried to stay awake when Dad was drunk and angry – and when I heard the noise I got out of bed, crossed the hallway...
Finding the angles
‘EVERY WOMAN ADORES a fascist.'– Sylvia Plath 1. The puppyWITH PAUL, SEX has become vicious altruism: Come on, I'll give you what you want... This is what he teaches her: the availability of humiliation; the intolerable easiness of pleasure.He also teaches her to play pool and...
Paul’s first day
PAUL WAS ALWAYS the first person to be killed. I met him at his practical exam. The trainees were waiting for their names to be called.Scenes of carnage outside – trainers lying around pretending to have broken legs, blocked airways, bleeding organs. Trucks parked at...
The other side of the world
TELL ME A story, the boy said every night. So I did. Every night, a different story. Fairytales, Dr Seuss, favourite picture books. But always he wanted more, as if something was missing. I wouldn't tell him the old stories. The ones that keep...
The end of Pippa, the beginning of Claire
SHE WASN'T ALWAYS like this. Starched and furrowed. She was still young, or youngish. She had everything, people said: delicate good looks, family money, a big brother to ruffle her a little and stop her becoming too prissy, a mind that could think about...
Her boredom trick
WHEN CLARA FINALLY arrives, she is not only half an hour late, she has also brought her dog with her. It leaps from the car, Clara only just managing to hold onto the lead as she uses the strength in her arms to get...
The disappointment
IT IS USUAL for The Disappointed to come in pairs, but Bonnie always comes alone. In the small, overheated waiting room, she sits not with a partner but with her carefully chosen tools of disappearance, one of which is a novel. In the early...
The raft
SCHOOL WAS FINISHED for the year, and only two days into the holidays we had the makings of a raft. Tin drums rolled like thunder down the street as we chased after them. They sounded like giants laughing, so happy they could burst. Like...
Mrs Clause’s Christmas
SAINT NICK WAS getting on, after all – he for one was not surprised to have fallen ill, at long last developing immunity to elven fairy dust. It used to be that at the first sign of cold or flu, or any other ailment,...
The composer
THE MOTHER OF my daughter's best friend called him ‘the composer'. She said she bought ironbark honey from him, and that he had a violin for sale. I told her it had to be a good one; Mei was entering Brisbane's Young Conservatorium Orchestra,...
Flame red
DEAR LANCE,I am sitting on the back seat of the bus, heading for Melbourne. This morning, my father took me to the railway station and we waited in the shade of a stringybark tree for the bus to pull up and open its door....
Rain
BEN GETS ON the phone immediately and rings his brother who farms two hours' drive away. It's raining! he yells. Really raining. It's raining! What's it like at your place? Nothing here, replies his brother in a subdued tone. Ben then rings his neighbour...
The way I hear it
WE WERE WATCHING television when we heard the sound. It was strange and yet familiar at the same time, a sudden hiss of air or water, some element let loose in a hurry. It was loud, too. Graeme turned the television up and then,...
The morning aunt
SATURDAY MORNING AND I'm out of bed and running in the garden in my pyjamas. It is warm and Dad has made a wobbly pagoda from chicken wire and Mum has planted geraniums that have grown all over it. Nanna says that geraniums are...
Did Eros remember her name?
IT WAS AT the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna that Edith noticed that Ian was behaving in a curious way, bending down as if looking at the showcase of liturgical objects but, in fact, she realised, looking at her through the showcase.He was her secretary of...
The dignity of labour
JASON CUPPED THE dog's testicles in the palm of his left hand and rolled them back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. His hand was wet and slippery with soap suds, which made the process a lot easier both for practical reasons and...
Featured Contributors
Rodney Hall
Rodney Hall is the author of eleven novels, including the Miles Franklin Award-winners Just Relations (Penguin, 1982) and The...
John Kinsella
John Kinsella is emeritus professor of literature and environment at Curtin University, and a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge....
Kate Grenville
Kate Grenville is one of Australia's finest writers. Her early works, which include Lilian's Story, Dark Places and Joan...
Nikki Gemmell
Nikki Gemmell has written five novels – her most recent is The Book of Rapture.Her latest book is the...
