"Eleven stories. Each like a matchstick struck to illuminate the darkness. Evocations of place ranging from a Bangla jungle to the deep, blue Danube to a winter beach in Melbourne excite and seduce. But what truly draws the reader in are the unexpected landscapes of people’s lives, explored with rare sensitivity, grace and a fearless truthfulness.
"A lonely St Kilda chef invites a beautiful busker to use his spare room. A father sings a lullaby to comfort his young daughter who has woken from a nightmare. A taxi driver picks up an old-world gentleman who is reluctant to disclose his destination. A young immigrant boy growing up in the western suburbs of Melbourne daydreams of infinite possibility.
"Death, loneliness, passion and belief: Patrić takes on the big questions in life and writes about the small people of the world with stylistic verve and deep humanity.
"This collection of stories reveals the author, best known for his award-winning novels, as a true master of the short story form." (Publishers blurb)
'Swimming in early summer is a particular pleasure. Sunlight through the high windows lasts past eight in the evening. Not too many people around. I'm going well when I see something drifting along the bottom and it could be a bandaid, yet it is not, and it should be anything else but it's a finger...' (Publication abstract)
'VS Pritchett used to say the short story was “something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing”. As a critic and a practitioner of the form, he knew that the angle of creative approach required is different to that of the novel. That larger form needs to be dealt with head-on.' (Introduction)
'AS Patrić won the Miles Franklin Award for his novel Black Rock White City. In this new collection he demonstrates his mastery of the short story.' (Introduction)
'Patrić uses the short story form to perfection and is no less adept with the novella.'
'A. S. Patrić’s The Butcherbird Stories aims to unsettle. Each story plunges the reader into a unique scenario, enhanced by the author’s penchant for beginning in medias res. Further discombobulating the reader, the stories often experiment with voice, milieu and structure. However, the work may be thematically organised by an interest in masculine violence, and in liminal states that hover somewhere between the rational and irrational.' (Introduction)
'AS Patrić won the Miles Franklin Award for his novel Black Rock White City. In this new collection he demonstrates his mastery of the short story.' (Introduction)
'VS Pritchett used to say the short story was “something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing”. As a critic and a practitioner of the form, he knew that the angle of creative approach required is different to that of the novel. That larger form needs to be dealt with head-on.' (Introduction)
'In 2016 A.S. Patrić’s first novel, Black Rock, White City won the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Two years earlier (he told an interviewer) he couldn’t even get a rejection slip for it: not one of the big Australian publishers responded when he sent the manuscript. The independent company Transit Lounge took it on, and the rest is history. Or, rather, the rest of Patrić’s work comes into the light: Transit Lounge has since published his second novel, Atlantic Black (2017), and now this, his fourth collection of short fiction.' (Introduction)
