Cirrus@Austlit

'Weather, beasts and death. That’s what Hannah’s mother writes of in the letters she sends. They arrive in London from Australia and Hannah ignores them for as long as she can. “Every time a letter from her arrives, I lose my breath, as though some tiny venomous bug might spring from it. [The letter] has sat unopened since I brought it upstairs, stuffed into the cupboard next to the fuse box where I don’t have to look at it. But I feel it like a heat from the corner of the room.”' (Introduction)

'Sophie Matthiesson’s debut novel, Together We Fall Apart, is another contribution to the genre of feminine middle-class melodrama in Australian fiction, the growing appetite for which might be bound up with the rise of book groups. This type of book is characterised by a well-educated, professional female protagonist and a plot centred on individual romance and familial challenges, with the latter most typically involving the death of a parent. These novels, which seem to prize being relatable, are often characterised by what Patrick White might have called a “dreary, dun-coloured” realism. Matthiesson’s novel isn’t always compelling – descriptions of busy airports and train stations are unnecessary and the dialogue is often banal – but the story is certainly not without appeal. This is primarily because it retains a bold interest in the unsentimental, even unpalatable, complexity of human relationships.' (Introduction)

'Each of the 12 stories in Fiona McFarlane’s fourth book, Highway 13, relates to a serial killer’s crimes. Set in different times and places, McFarlane’s stories work loosely with the facts of seven murders in the Belanglo State Forest south of Sydney. The disappearance of a series of young travellers from 1989 remained a mystery until several years later when seven bodies were found in shallow forest graves. Ivan Milat, convicted of these “backpacker murders”, was a suspect in relation to scores of unsolved murders and disappearances, and the evidence suggests he did not always act alone. The brutality of the crimes, the testimony of survivor Paul Onions and Milat’s refusal to confess fuelled intense media and community fascination.' (Introduction)