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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'In The Best Australian Stories, acclaimed writer Maxine Beneba Clarke brings together our country’s leading literary talents. Herself an award-winning short-story writer, Beneba Clarke selects exceptional stories that resonate with experience and truth, and celebrate the art of storytelling.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Dedication: To Tracy, as always.
Contents
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Sissy,
single work
short story
'Sissy had never been on a holiday and didn't know a child on her street or a classmate at Sacred Heart School who'd travelled much further than the local swimming pool. At best they'd enjoyed a tram ride to a picture theatre in the city, maybe once or twice a year. A girl in the same year at school, Ruby Allison who lived behind the dry-cleaners with her mother and two older brothers, came back to school after the previous summers holidays and told a story that she had been to the ocean over summer.' (Introduction)
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Barren Ground,
single work
short story
'The wheel rumbled over a piece of roadkill. Ruth glanced in the rear-view mirror, but all that remained was matted flesh and fur.
'She angled the mirror to check on her husband. Slumped in the backseat, head lolling with the motion of the ute, his eyes slitted in that way that made her feel he was watching her — even when he slept.' (Introduction)
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Miracles,
single work
short story
'It was Deirdre Emerson’s boy who was first affected. He went off to school at six and a half years old, ready for a day of alphabets and animals, and crept home a man of five feet ten, dressed like a fool in teenaged things from the lost property.' (Introduction)
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Dreamers,
single work
short story
`Gimme an axe.'
'The woman blurted this order across the formica counter. When the shopkeeper turned and saw her brimming eyes he took a hasty step backwards. His rancid half-smile, insincere to begin with, vanished into the gloomy corners of the store. It was still very early. Outside, tucked beneath a ragged hibiscus bush, a hen cawed a single, doubtful note. Inside was nothing but this black girl and her highly irregular demand.' (Introduction)
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Trampoline,
single work
short story
'When we get home from school my brother's dad, Jerry, is out the front, leaning against a truck that has a trampoline strapped to the back of it.' (66)
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Perry Feral,
single work
short story
'This suburb has not that many trees. A few blocks away I can see the orange neon sign, a petrol station. I pull the car over on the side of a road. We sit in silence for almost a minute...'
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The Wall,
single work
short story
'On morning TV, a politician is promising to build a wall. The wall will divide Australia across the middle.'
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Slut Trouble,
single work
short story
'The first girl is taken on the second weekend of the school holidays. Her name is Julie-Anne Marks; she is nineteen, she is beautiful, and she is gone. Everywhere we look Julie-Anne Marks is looking back at us. Just the one photo at first – the one her parents gave the police the night she didn’t come home. Julie-Anne Marks is stuffed into our letterboxes, pinned to every bulletin board, taped to every telephone pole. She takes up the whole front page of The Messenger – a full page in colour, block-capital headline. WHERE IS OUR JULIE-ANNE?' (Introduction)
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Help Me Harden My Heart,
single work
short story
'I’m scrubbing the word SCUM off the front door of our house. I wipe so hard that my wrists start to ache, but the red letters remain bold and bright, their edges dripping as if they’re bleeding.' (71)
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The Encyclopaedia of Wild Things,
single work
short story
'In year 4 We built a fox. We made it out of facts, so it was bigger than a real fox, and slinkier. It prowled between the bushes in the scrubland behind the oval. We pretended to play cricket, but we were watching the shrubs swish. We lost score each time we thought we heard it padding.' (83)
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The Boat,
single work
short story
'His name is Paul or Peter, I forget. We sit together, squashed among a couple of dozen others like the human luggage that we are, below the deck, where years of putrifying fish have left their stink. No windows. Someone's puked. An infant cries.' (Introduction)
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Glisk,
single work
short story
'We are wading out, the five of us. I remember this. The sun an hour or two from melting into the ocean, the slick trail of its gold showing the way we will take.'
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Nosebleed,
single work
autobiography
'By the time I got to my mum's house I was already starting to think there might be something wrong with me and then Mum asked me how I was and I told her I have this cyst on my back that hurts when I touch it, and Mum said that's disgusting, that's disgusting, how are you going to find a husband if you keep talking like that, if you talk about your body like that, and I said Mum, I don't need to find a husband, I don't expect to find a husband anyway, I tend to only have sex with drunk guys, and Mum grimaced and told me that if I don't respect myself I'll never find a good man, and that if I just met a good man I wouldn't have to humiliate myself, and I said no, Mum, you don't understand, I only have sex with drunk guys because when I cum I make this guttural noise with my throat, it feels like it's coming from my stomach, like a kitchen sink when you drain the water, or like a dying toad, I've had it ever since I was a teenager and it's done nothing but escalate in volume and depth, when I lost my virginity the guys I was with were kind of grossed out, but drunk guys don't seem to notice it because they're drunk and they're usually already asleep by the time I cum, so we all get along, and Mum stood up and pointed to the door and said I told you not to talk like that, get out, and I said alright, and as I walked down the steps I called out and asked if she would prefer it if I lied to her and she said no, I don't want you to lie to me, I just wish you were different.' (Publication abstract)
- The Telephone, single work short story (p. 113-119)
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Growth,
single work
short story
'It lies on the crisp hospital sheet, absolutely grotesque. Dr Arnold tells us it's called a fetus in few. Our son's unformed twin. Most likely joined via the umbilical cord in gestation, now just a jumble of elephantine bone and skin, about the size of an apricot. Three canines — there's no denying they're teeth — protrude in a jagged line across its circumference. When we first saw it after the operation there was a shock of hair pressed to its side, still moist from having Thomas's stomach juices washed away. It looked like the slick of hair and scum drawn from a shower's plughole. I gagged, felt nausea water my mouth. But the hair, the colour of wheat and nearly ten centimetres long, is dry now, almost glossy. It looks like her hair. Like Hannah's. ' (120)
- Numb, single work short story (p. 126-134)
- Polly Stepford (1932-1997), single work biography (p. 135-140)
- A United Front, single work short story (p. 141-152)
- One's Company, single work short story (p. 153-161)
- By Proxy, single work short story (p. 162-167)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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April in Fiction
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , March 2018;
— Review of The Life to Come 2017 single work novel ; The Best Australian Stories 2017 2017 anthology short story ; The Fish Girl 2017 single work novella -
Children at the Heart of Stirring Narratives
2017
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 9 December 2017; (p. 20)
— Review of The Best Australian Stories 2017 2017 anthology short story ; The Best Australian Essays 2017 2017 anthology essay'Children are the focus of Maxine Beneba Clarke’s choices in The Best Australian Stories 2017: children who disappear, children who are taken, children who never were. This theme unites the anthology so the stories speak softly to each other like whispers passed along a line.' (Introduction)
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Children at the Heart of Stirring Narratives
2017
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 9 December 2017; (p. 20)
— Review of The Best Australian Stories 2017 2017 anthology short story ; The Best Australian Essays 2017 2017 anthology essay'Children are the focus of Maxine Beneba Clarke’s choices in The Best Australian Stories 2017: children who disappear, children who are taken, children who never were. This theme unites the anthology so the stories speak softly to each other like whispers passed along a line.' (Introduction)
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April in Fiction
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , March 2018;
— Review of The Life to Come 2017 single work novel ; The Best Australian Stories 2017 2017 anthology short story ; The Fish Girl 2017 single work novella