Cirrus@Austlit

'As I write this essay the cicadas are shrill outside. The air is heavy and even in my cool study I am sweating with the heat. Later today it might rain; tonight it is quite possible that a storm will sweep over. In several minutes the chorus of cicadas will stop in unison, as if conducted by a maestro. This is Sydney weather, not the imaginary tropical north of much of Janette Turner Hospital’s fiction, yet these experiences are so similar when reading her work that it creates a constant tremor of recognition, one so potent as to be almost physical.' (Introduction)