Cirrus@Austlit

'At the end of Julia, a play about former prime minister Julia Gillard’s famous misogyny speech, after the rapturous applause had finally faded and the patrons had begun to shuffle out, the woman seated next to my partner and I turned to me and asked, ‘Why were you laughing so much?’ I hedged politely. Nice try, lady, but no—I was not about to confess my true feelings about a Melbourne Theatre Company production to a woman wearing a cape.' (Introduction)

'With both drollness and acuity, Sally Olds takes us into worlds we may not have ever visited before. In these sometimes alien spaces she explores and reports on everyday intimacies and vulnerabilities.

'This book is about working and not working, hating work and needing to work, intimacy and technology, money and love, labour and pleasure. Across a series of essays, Sally Olds probes the ambivalent utopias of polyamory, cryptocurrency, clubbing, communes, a secret fraternity, and the essay form itself. Curiosity drives each of these adventures into projected worlds, where Olds explores how living with precariousness changes expectations of how a life can be lived in this thrilling appraisal of the state of things.'  (Publication summary)