Cirrus@Austlit

'In Briohny Doyle’s fourth book, a writer called BB has lost both her partner and father in close succession, and, in the aftermath of their deaths, experiences the first wave of pandemic lockdowns. Certain that further quarantine will see her petrified in viscous grief—that she will ‘crawl out of [her] share-house bedroom an old woman in a post-apocalyptic ruin’—she retreats to a beachfront rental above a condemned shop in the seaside area of Balboa Bay. Her plan is to heal by the ocean, ‘weightless and untethered for a short time’, before returning to real life.' (Introduction)

'Buried Not Dead is a collection of essays from across the career of the brilliant Sydney writer and performance artist Fiona Kelly McGregor. I first read it in 2021 (I think), though recalled that I’d read some of the essays before when they first appeared in places like Overland or the (now defunct) performing arts magazine RealTime.' (Introduction)

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'Being rich and earning a lot of money is relentless, wearying work and having to work at relationships and intimacy is a further burden on the already time-poor. When rich men engage 'the girlfriend experience' they get more than just sex (as if 'just sex' were even a thing). With the girlfriend experience there are add-ons: comfort, affection, glamorous company, intellectual stimulation, distraction, flattery, an empathic ear-or at least an authentic-seeming performance of it, which is just as good. Of course there is sex, negotiated within certain parameters, but there is also a customised form of intimacy that is obliging and undemanding. The girlfriend experience is a bespoke romantic service, tailored to individual sexual and emotional needs. It is a rarefied form of sex work for an exclusive clientele, although in many ways the woman's labour is utterly mundane.'  (Publication abstract)

'Under the Skin is adapted from Michael Faber’s eponymous speculative fiction novel (2000) in which an alien disguised as an attractive woman hunts hitchhikers in the Scottish highlands. Once she has determined that a man is appropriate prey, she drugs him and delivers him to a subterranean abattoir hidden beneath a farm where, in a disturbing allegorisation of factory farming, he is castrated, fattened up like foie gras, and prepared for shipment back to the alien home planet where human flesh is an expensive delicacy. This adaptation of Faber’s novel is the long-anticipated third feature film from director Jonathan Glazer.' (Introduction)