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Griffith Review38

November 2012

  • David Sornig

In its fourth annual fiction edition, the Griffith Review has published six high-quality new novellas by Australian authors: Mary-Rose MacColl’s ‘The water of life’ about the death of a Brisbane pedestrian, Katerina Cosgrove’s ‘Intimate distance’ about an intra-familial love triangle in Greece and Sydney, Christine Kearney’s fevered heteroglossia of Dili life ‘A minor loss of fidelity’, Ed Wright’s ‘An end to hope’ set in a Japanese village in WWII, Lyndel Caffrey’s ‘Glad’ about  young working class lovers in 1920s Melbourne, and Jim Hearn’s ‘River Street’ in which a junkie is on a breakneck, adrenaline-charged quest to land a job in a restaurant kitchen.


Each story is so memorable and satisfying in its own way that I’m not going to do the collection a disservice by picking a favourite. Where short stories are sometimes too elusive, and novels, with all their rococo splendour, are sometimes too noisy, these novellas satisfyingly encourage attachment to character and the full development of a single story. Even when they do stray into Sliding Door possibilities, into future speculations, ghosted worlds or junkie hyperreality, they don’t drift far from their anchors in the real. Lots to love here.

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