'A woman on a passenger ship in 1958 gets involved with a young, wild Barry Humphries. A man looks back to the 1970s, and his time as a member of Australia’s least competent scout troop. In 1988, a teenage boy recalls his sexual initiation, out on the tanbark. In 2015, two sisters text in Kmart about how to manage their irascible mother.
'Then, in the near future, a racist demagogue – a kind of Australian Trump – talks to the press the day after his electoral triumph. As the cities heat up and lose their water, a lady from one of the ‘better suburbs’ makes every effort to get her family, and her dog, into a gated community.
'This is Australia, in all its glories and its foibles – and its insularity and fear. These stories are a reflection of where we are now, and where we may be headed. Bitingly satirical, outstandingly original and written in a remarkable range of voices, A Couple of Things Before the End is a stand-out fiction debut of 2020.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
A Conversation with Sean O'Beirne
Chris Somerville
(interviewer),
2020
23470034
2020
single work
podcast
interview
'Sean O'Beirne chats with Readings bookseller and author Chris Somerville about his debut work of fiction, A Couple of Things Before the End.' (Production summary)
'The American writer Jack Matthews had no time for what he called ‘a discontent’ with the brevity of the short story. ‘Ask a coral snake,’ he declared, ‘which is as deadly as it is small.’ The claim for ‘deadliness’ certainly applies to four recent début collections; in the tight spaces of the short story, each one presents confronting ideas about contemporary Australia.' (Introduction)
'Every so often we’re reminded with a jolt that Australian realism doesn’t – to use Patrick White’s phrase – have to be dun-coloured. In fact it can be kinky, it can be ludic, it can be in the tradition of that shaggiest of shaggy-dog stories, Furphy’s Such Is Life, which begins with that immortal and immemorially appealing Australian sentiment, “Unemployed at last!”' (Introduction)
'Every so often we’re reminded with a jolt that Australian realism doesn’t – to use Patrick White’s phrase – have to be dun-coloured. In fact it can be kinky, it can be ludic, it can be in the tradition of that shaggiest of shaggy-dog stories, Furphy’s Such Is Life, which begins with that immortal and immemorially appealing Australian sentiment, “Unemployed at last!”' (Introduction)
'The American writer Jack Matthews had no time for what he called ‘a discontent’ with the brevity of the short story. ‘Ask a coral snake,’ he declared, ‘which is as deadly as it is small.’ The claim for ‘deadliness’ certainly applies to four recent début collections; in the tight spaces of the short story, each one presents confronting ideas about contemporary Australia.' (Introduction)
A Conversation with Sean O'Beirne
Chris Somerville
(interviewer),
2020
23470034
2020
single work
podcast
interview
'Sean O'Beirne chats with Readings bookseller and author Chris Somerville about his debut work of fiction, A Couple of Things Before the End.' (Production summary)
