AustLit

'Mary Pomfret offers a bouquet of vignettes to the reader willing to be led from the surface sweetness of existence to the dark underside of the banal and every day. Washing the dishes, chopping wood, a walk in the forest are innocent enough activities. Tread carefully. The tender illustrations by Julie Andrews are traditional in style but deceptive in intent. Her images trace a seemingly benign trajectory of the familiar and the mundane to a place where human pain leaks out.' (Publication summary)

'After years of living in the harsh Australian outback, Iris Bloom returns with her ailing husband to her hometown in the south. Old memories surface and begin to disturb and haunt her. Iris tries to make sense of her murky past through her writing. But she discovers that dangerous writing can sometimes have fatal consequences. Fearing she might reveal a dark secret they buried long ago, Iris’s family refuse to accept her back into the fold. After her death, Iris leaves her unpublished manuscript – dedicated to someone called Rose - in the hands of her solicitor. Iris’s letters are interwoven with her stories about intriguing but deeply troubled characters. Just what is fact and what is fiction in the stories Iris leaves behind? Why does this matter so? And who is Rose? Immensely readable, this psychological mystery is both emotionally shocking, but captivating until the end.' (Publication summary)

'Cleaning out the closet is typically a woman's task. It is also a perfect metaphor for the creative endeavour as it rummages through junk - items long discarded or abandoned - for signs of renewal. In the tradition of the great female storytellers - Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf - Mary Pomfret reveals the dramatic, consequential and often painful intimacies harboured within the seemingly innocuous details of family life.' - Sue Gillett

'Mary Pomfret's fiction explores uncanny inner landscapes of memory and desire. Her stories challenge the amnesia behind everyday existence and after a reading we are reacquainted with our strangely familiar, vulnerable and eminently human better selves.' - Ian Irvine

'Mary Pomfret's stories speak to the heart of family darkness, sibling rivalry, filial love and lost innocence, without for an instant being melodramatic or overwrought. These beautiful, compelling tales are peopled with complex characters and told by a writer who makes the domestic sublime.' - Alice Pung '(Publication summary)