'A deeply personal collection filled with reflections on love, death, creativity and healing, from the award-winning author of Bruny and The Museum of Modern Love.
'With rare subtlety and humanity, this novel relocates the difficult path to wonder in us all.' The Christina Stead Prize judges on The Museum of Modern Love
'And then it occurred to me that nothing bad ever happens here.
'Every human life is perfect in its own way. We cannot understand that, because it seems like there is so much suffering. But maybe every life is perfect for we need to know and learn and see and understand. Even when we don't understand, even when the suffering seems unfathomable, does some part of us understand? Could that really be true, I wondered?
'Nothing bad ever happens here...
'My body was shaking violently now. I held onto the rock beneath me as if I was clinging to life itself. Maybe I was. I clung to this life, my life, with all its imperfections and mistakes, with all its joy. I didn't want to go anywhere.
'After a shocking family tragedy transforms Heather Rose's Tasmanian childhood, she becomes 'a seeker of life and all its mysteries'. Heather has spent a lifetime testing boundaries and exploring the connections between love and death, the natural world and the body. Her questing spirit and her strong affinity with nature have inspired and driven her throughout her life-and deeply sustained her in times of darkness. Her words will bring wonder, light and comfort to all who read this astonishing book.
'Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here is a luminous, compelling and utterly surprising memoir by the bestselling author of Stella Prize-winner The Museum of Modern Love and Bruny.' (Publication summary)
'This award-winning writer’s eclectic memoir teems with ghosts and gratitude.'
'Since her debut novel in 1999, Heather Rose has written astutely about the vulnerabilities of people and the sublime beauty of the natural world, particularly her home state of Tasmania. Her Stella Prize-winning The Museum of Modern Love used Marina Abramović’s performance The Artist is Present to explore love, loss and art-making. Bruny, Rose’s 2019 novel, took on international politics, protest and global capital, though it too was very much concerned with family, illness and the stories we tell.' (Introduction)
'I have to begin my review of acclaimed novelist Heather Rose’s first foray into non-fiction with an admission: I am a deeply unspiritual person. I find “spiritual journey” narratives, generally speaking, solipsistic and tedious: I even grew impatient reading Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha.' (Introduction)
'I have to begin my review of acclaimed novelist Heather Rose’s first foray into non-fiction with an admission: I am a deeply unspiritual person. I find “spiritual journey” narratives, generally speaking, solipsistic and tedious: I even grew impatient reading Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha.' (Introduction)
'Since her debut novel in 1999, Heather Rose has written astutely about the vulnerabilities of people and the sublime beauty of the natural world, particularly her home state of Tasmania. Her Stella Prize-winning The Museum of Modern Love used Marina Abramović’s performance The Artist is Present to explore love, loss and art-making. Bruny, Rose’s 2019 novel, took on international politics, protest and global capital, though it too was very much concerned with family, illness and the stories we tell.' (Introduction)
'This award-winning writer’s eclectic memoir teems with ghosts and gratitude.'
