AustLit

'On April 19, 2019, a gleaming, perfect day in Oakland, California, George Kovach and Julia Odegard prepared dinner in their lakeside apartment for an Australian author, Heather Morris, who was visiting that night. She was writing a book about Kovach’s stepmother and father, and, though he hadn’t heard of her before, Kovach had learnt she’d written a book called The Tattooist of Auschwitz, and that it had been immensely successful.' (Introduction)

'The arrival of a new Ned Kelly anything, be it book, film, play or even opera, is bound to provoke questions. Chief among them might be “Really? Another one?”… but this, I concede, is a less than charitable view. More useful, perhaps, to ponder precisely which version we’ll be getting, such is the unusual malleability of this particular tale.' (Introduction)

'Hailing “a promising new voice” is a useful cliché of criticism, and one which Sean O’Beirne’s debut collection earns as literally, and as variously, as possible. What we have here are not so much stories as miniature monologues detailing a world somewhere between everyday and apocalyptic, and shaped with some of our lowest forms of utterance: political press conferences, YouTube comments, bucks night speeches. It’s rare to see a book so confident in its ability to convert the linguistic detritus of our era into something of lasting value.' (Introduction)