'When Eleanor gets her dream job as a teacher in Talbingo, a hamlet in the Snowy Mountains, it seems as if all her problems are solved. Clean air and country life are just what she needs to complete her breast cancer recovery, with bonus respite from her indifferent friends and the kindly doctor she tried to pash. Her best friend, Sally, has gone full Bridezilla, and her ex, Josh, has got a new girlfriend – “Delores of the double-D cups” – in record time, and everyone else is implying she brought cancer on herself: “Well, you have always been a stresser.”' (Introduction)
'In Markus Zusak’s Bridge of Clay, the five Dunbar young men – Matthew, Rory, Henry, Clayton and Thomas – have, since the death of their mother, Penny, and the abandonment by their father, Michael, formed a wild gang with their menagerie of animals. Brutal and violent to each other, the boys embody the term “toxic masculinity”. When Michael returns after a long absence wanting help to build a bridge, it’s only Clay who responds. His task is also metaphorical as he attempts to restore his fractured family. Matthew, the eldest, narrates the story of the bridge as well as that of the boys’ parents, in flashbacks from their childhoods.' (Introduction)
'Fiona Wright’s second collection of essays, the follow-up to 2015’s superb Small Acts of Disappearance, is concerned with dark matter. Not the invisible stuff that makes up most of our universe, but those hidden parts of human life made from particles of habit.' (Introduction)
