'A young man can’t make love. A pedantic father spots a blemish in his new shorts and returns to the shop to demand their exchange. A girl rocks up to a Tinder date wearing a helmet.
'In nineteen short stories, No Neat Endings pits its characters against the challenges of modern life, sex, love, work and the world. A man observes his brother’s rise to comic stardom with envy and angst. A father faces his fortieth with mortal paranoia. A friend returns from Brazil to become embroiled in a drug-fuelled romp in a share house. It doesn’t work out. For so many of the characters in these stories, it doesn’t end well. They succumb to their own vices, impulses, insecurities. They have, more often than not, only themselves to blame.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'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)
'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)
