'Before the bushfires -- before the front of flames comes roaring over the hills -- the ridges are thick with gums.
'After the fires, the birds have gone. There is only grey ash and melted metal, the blackened husks of cars.
'And the lost people -- in temporary accommodation on the outskirts of the city, on the TV news in borrowed clothes, or remembered in flyers on a cafe wall.
'A Constant Hum grapples with the aftermath of disaster with an eye for telling detail. Some of these stories cut to the bone; others are empathetic stories of survival, even hope. All are gripping and beautifully written, heralding the arrival of an important new voice in literary fiction.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Dedication:
For my parents,
for everything
&
For Christmas Hills, home-
both before the bushfires of Black Saturday, and regrown.
A brief review of this work appeared in The New York Times 13 December 2020
Preppers and Survivalism in the AustLit Database
This work has been affiliated with the Preppers and Survivalism project due to its relationship to either prepping or prepper-inflected survivalism more generally, and contains one or more of the following:
1. A strong belief in some imminent threat
2. Taking active steps to prepare for that perceived threat
3. A character or characters (or text) who self-identify as a ‘prepper’, or some synonymous/modified term: ‘financial preppers’, ‘weekend preppers’, ‘fitness preppers’, etc.
'The stories we tell about bushfire are changing. Our writers have been grappling with its link to climate crisis for years'
'In the acknowledgements that append her short story collection, A Constant Hum, Alice Bishop states that her book is intended to keep ‘in mind’ the people who died in Black Saturday (199). Though Bishop lost a house in those fires, she says she cannot imagine ‘how it would really feel’ to have lost family, friends, or a partner (199). Her writing, however, derives from a genuine attempt to comprehend these experiences—and results in a book that acts as a memorial for the dead, as a tribute to the survivors, and as a means for others to engage in the motivated and directed acts of imagination that constitute empathy.' (Introduction)
A Conversation with Alice Bishop
David Little
(interviewer),
2019
23469763
2019
single work
podcast
interview
'Alice Bishop chats with Readings bookseller David Little about her debut work of fiction, A Constant Hum.' (Production summary)
(Introduction)
'A Constant Hum (2019) by Alice Bishop and The Glad Shout (2019) by Alice Robinson are new Australian additions to the burgeoning genre of climate fiction – or cli-fi. They depict the impact of a natural disaster – fire and flood – precipitated by climate change. It is the human consequences of such events that are the core of each book. The stories are set in areas around Melbourne where the two authors have lived. Both are narrated in the present tense. Both titles refer to sound: a low reverberation and a rallying cry, which set the tone for each text. Neither book makes comfortable reading. The questions Bishop and Robinson ask are linked: could these disasters have been prevented? But more importantly, how do we keep going?' (Introduction)
(Introduction)
'In the acknowledgements that append her short story collection, A Constant Hum, Alice Bishop states that her book is intended to keep ‘in mind’ the people who died in Black Saturday (199). Though Bishop lost a house in those fires, she says she cannot imagine ‘how it would really feel’ to have lost family, friends, or a partner (199). Her writing, however, derives from a genuine attempt to comprehend these experiences—and results in a book that acts as a memorial for the dead, as a tribute to the survivors, and as a means for others to engage in the motivated and directed acts of imagination that constitute empathy.' (Introduction)
'The stories we tell about bushfire are changing. Our writers have been grappling with its link to climate crisis for years'
A Conversation with Alice Bishop
David Little
(interviewer),
2019
23469763
2019
single work
podcast
interview
'Alice Bishop chats with Readings bookseller David Little about her debut work of fiction, A Constant Hum.' (Production summary)
