Issue Details: First known date: 2021... 2021 ‘Hot, Red Proof of Life’ : S.J. Norman’s Impressive Short Story Collection
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Ambiguity, done well, has a bifurcating momentum that can floor you. The late Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar, a master of unsettling short stories shot through with ambiguity, knew this and used it to pugilistic advantage, declaring that ‘the novel wins by points, the short story by knockout’. Ambiguity is likewise central to S.J. Norman’s début collection, Permafrost, seven eerily affecting stories that traverse and update gothic and romantic literary traditions, incorporating horror, queer, and folk elements to hair-raising effect. No matter how often you read these spectral tales, they simply refuse to resolve themselves definitively. It could be that things have gone spectacularly wrong and that, simultaneously, everything is okay – a see-saw in constant motion, made all the creepier by the fact nobody is sitting on either side.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Book Review no. 437 November 2021 23362876 2021 periodical issue

    'With its feast of commentary and criticism, the November issue of ABR exemplifies the ‘art of more’. Judith Brett peers beneath the prime ministerial veneer with three of the nation’s top journalists, while Helen Ennis’s essay ‘Max Dupain’s dilemmas’, commended in this year’s Calibre Essay Prize, plumbs the depths of the great Australian photographer’s self-doubt. Stephen Bennetts contextualises Paul Cleary’s blow-by-blow account of the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation’s native title victory over Australia’s third-largest mining company. Further afield, ABR continues its coverage of the Middle East with Samuel Watts’s essay diagnosing the tensions between American domestic and foreign policy and Kevin Foster’s review of Mark Willacy’s exposé on Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan. The issue features reviews of new fiction by Christos Tsiolkas, Emily Bitto, Alison Bechdel, and Violet Kupersmith, work by some of Australia’s most exciting young poets – not to mention the latest by Delia Falconer, Yves Rees, Adam Tooze, and much, much more!' (Publication summary)

     

    2021
    pg. 32
Last amended 1 Nov 2021 16:29:54
32 https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2021/november-2021-no-437/969-november-2021-no-437/8412-paul-dalgarno-reviews-permafrost-by-s-j-norman ‘Hot, Red Proof of Life’ : S.J. Norman’s Impressive Short Story Collectionsmall AustLit logo Australian Book Review
Review of:
  • Permafrost S. J. Norman 2021 selected work short story
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