AustLit

'Marian Matta’s Life, Bound moves through time and place, following characters who struggle to escape the past and strive to shape the future.

'Free agents or captives of our past? In Life, Bound, characters find themselves caught in situations not of their own making, or trapped by ingrained habits, walking in grooves carved out by past events.

'An artist’s progress is pleasingly channelled into a pattern laid down a century earlier. A solitary man’s story is almost preordained, but is indecipherable to researchers looking back some sixty years later. Karma mops up in the wake of a mousy clerk. A local legend falls foul of the town gossip. Spouses are constrained or liberated by love. Sexuality, gender, resentments, attachments and perversities all play a part. Yet the grip of the past needn’t always hold firm. Many protagonists are offered a potentially life-changing moment; whether or not they grasp it is up to them.

'Matta began concentrating on the short story format in 2006 after being inspired by Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain. Her stories have subsequently appeared in several anthologies, but Life, Bound is her first solo collection.

‘Marian Matta’s superb stories are both uplifting and heart wrenching. She delves into the psyche with characters so astutely drawn that you want to follow them off the page. This is a deeply rewarding collection from a writer who knows how to express the intricacies of what it means to be human in a world that pulses with beauty, uncertainty and despair.’ – Joanna Atherfold Finn, author of Watermark

‘Warm and witty stories. Marian Matta reveals her characters with razor-sharp clarity.’ – Lynette Washington, author of
Plane Tree Drive'

(Source: publisher's blurb)