Cirrus@Austlit

'In the opening pages of Kate Kruimink’s new novel, Heartsease, the narrator, Nelly Llewellyn, describes a weekend afternoon at Salamanca, in Hobart/nipaluna. “There is brine, coffee, red wine, whiskey, bread, soup, the yellow of old books, and an earthy array of sensible jumpers. Only the merest traces of attempted genocide in the air, the soil.” It’s a sketch that captures not just the sense of linguistic delight and playfulness that makes the book such a thoroughgoing pleasure but also the darkness and sense of loss that moves beneath them.' (Introduction)