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Fiona McFarlane Fiona McFarlane i(A69636 works by)
Born: Established: 1978 Sydney, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Female
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Works By

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2 8 y separately published work icon Highway 13 Fiona McFarlane , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2024 28007150 2024 single work novel crime

'A gripping, haunting work about the reverberations of a serial killer's crimes in the lives of everyday people.

'In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims' families, but its impact travels even further - into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.

'Highway 13 takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more: through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence across time and place, from the killer's home town in country Australia to the tropical Far North, and to Texas and Rome, McFarlane presents an unforgettable, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.

'What damages, big and small, do these crimes incur? How do communities make sense of such atrocities? How does the mourning of families sit alongside the public fascination with terrible crimes? And can we tell true crime stories without putting the killers at the centre of the story?

'From the acclaimed author of The Sun Walks Down and The Night Guest comes a captivating account of loss and fear, and its extended echoes in individual lives.' (Publication summary)

1 10 y separately published work icon The Sun Walks Down Fiona McFarlane , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2022 24978415 2022 single work novel historical fiction

'In September 1883, the South Australian town of Fairly huddles under strange, vivid sunsets. Six-year-old Denny Wallace has gone missing during a dust storm, and the whole town is intent on finding him. As they search the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly - newlyweds, landowners, farmers, mothers, artists, Indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, schoolteachers, widows, maids, policemen - explore their own relationships with the complex landscape unsettling history of the Flinders Ranges.

'The colonial Australia of The Sun Walks Down is unfamiliar, multicultural, and noisy with opinions, arguments, longings and terrors. It's haunted by many gods - the sun among them, rising and falling on each day that Denny could be found, or lost forever.'  (Publication summary)

1 Structure in Nom Le's 'Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice' Fiona McFarlane , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Reading Like an Australian Writer 2021;
1 First Fleet : Little Annals (from a Work-in-progress) Emma Scully Jones , Fiona McFarlane , 2018 extract sequence prose
— Appears in: Island , no. 153 2018; (p. 36-41)

'A note on the text

'What follows is part of a larger work-in-progress in which a poet and a novelist respond to the archival records of every convict who set out for Botany Bay on the First Fleet. Italicised words are taken directly from contemporary sources; lineated sections, also taken directly from the sources, have been rearranged by the authors into found poems. 

'The authors acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as the traditional owners of the place we now call Sydney, where many of these events take place.' (Introduction)

1 Elizabeth Harrower in Sydney Fiona McFarlane , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Elizabeth Harrower : Critical Essays 2017; (p. 17-20)
'It seemed especially fitting to re-read the work of Elizabeth Harrower in Sydney in November, the season of the jacaranda, when Sydney is perhaps most perfectly and most ludicrously itself. Because Harrower is one of the great novelists of Sydney, and it’s impossible – I find it impossible – to think of her work without also thinking of the suburbs of the lower North Shore, of Kings Cross, and again and again of Sydney Harbour.' (Introduction)
1 Toil and Trouble Fiona McFarlane , 2016 extract criticism (The Art of Work)
— Appears in: The Australian , 27-28 August 2016; (p. 22)
1 The Art of Work Fiona McFarlane , 2016 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Dyehouse 2016;

'I found my second-hand copy of The Dyehouse among the glorious chaos of Gould's Book Arcade in Sydney's Newtown. I had never heard of Mena Calthorpe, but after reading the first line I knew I'd buy it: 'Miss Merton came to the Dyehouse one windy afternoon when smoke from the railway-yards drifted darkly over Macdonaldtown.' (Introduction)

1 The High Places Fiona McFarlane , 2016 single work short story
— Appears in: The High Places 2016; (p. 255-275)
1 Good News for Modern Man Fiona McFarlane , 2016 single work short story
— Appears in: The Best Australian Stories 2016 2016; (p. 125-145) The High Places 2016; (p. 225-253)
1 Buttony Fiona McFarlane , 2016 single work short story
— Appears in: The High Places 2016; (p. 215-223)
1 Cara Mia Fiona McFarlane , 2016 single work short story
— Appears in: The High Places 2016; (p. 185-214)
1 Violet, Violet Fiona McFarlane , 2016 single work short story
— Appears in: The High Places 2016; (p. 153-174)
1 Rose Bay Fiona McFarlane , 2016 single work short story
— Appears in: The High Places 2016; (p. 131-151)
1 Unnecessary Gifts Fiona McFarlane , 2016 single work short story
— Appears in: The High Places 2016; (p. 85-103)
1 On Reading The Aunt’s Story by Patrick White Fiona McFarlane , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 75 no. 2 2016; (p. 17-31)
'The Aunt's Story was published in 1948. It was White's third novel, after Happy Valley and The Living and the Dead. He began it not long after the end of the war and wrote the first section, "Meroe", at a table in London, the second section, "Jardin Exotique", on a balcony in Alexandria, and the third, "Hosstius", on the deck of a ship as he sailed home to Australia. He arrived in Sydney wielding the manuscript as "a shield of a kind", and it was accepted by his American publishers with an acknowledgement that it was very fine but probably wouldn't sell. White was dismayed by the novel's reception in Australia. When his mother Ruth read it, she said to him, "Such a pity you didn't write about a cheery aunt" (White Flaws 58). (Introduction 17)
1 Man and Bird Fiona McFarlane , 2016 single work short story
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 23 January 2016; (p. 18) The High Places 2016; (p. 79-84)
1 11 y separately published work icon The High Places Fiona McFarlane , London : Hodder and Stoughton , 2016 9172969 2016 selected work short story

'The stories in this enthralling collection find those moments - and places - when life seems to do an about-face. The revelations of intimidating old friends on holiday, an accident on a dark country road, a lottery win and a lesson in the real nature of luck, the sudden arrival of American parachutists in a country town . . . here people are jolted into seeing themselves and their lives from a fresh and often disconcerting perspective.

'Ranging around the world from a remote Pacific island to the tourist haunts of Greece and written with great emotional insight, extraordinary invention and wry humour, each of these stories is as rich and rewarding as literature can be.' (Publication summary)

1 I Will Tell You Something Fiona McFarlane , 2015 single work essay
— Appears in: The Simple Act of Reading 2015; (p. 74-80)
13 22 y separately published work icon The Night Guest Fiona McFarlane , Melbourne : Penguin , 2013 6012414 2013 single work novel (taught in 2 units)

'The debut of a major Australian writer, The Night Guest is a mesmerising novel about trust, love, dependence, and the fear that the things you think you know may become the things you're least sure about.

One morning an elderly widow called Ruth wakes thinking a tiger has been in her seaside house. Later that day a formidable woman called Frida arrives, looking as if she's blown in from the sea, but who has in fact come to care for Ruth.

Frida and the tiger: both are here to stay, and neither is what they seem. How far can Ruth trust them? And as memories of childhood in Fiji press upon her with increasing urgency, how far can she trust herself?

The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane's hypnotic first novel, is no simple tale of a crime committed and a mystery solved. This is a tale that soars above its own suspense to tell us, with exceptional grace and beauty, about ageing, love, power and perception; about how the past can colonise the present, and about things (and people) in places they shouldn't be. Above all, it's a brilliantly involving story about two very particular women.' (Publisher's blurb)

1 The Movie People Fiona McFarlane , 2010 single work short story
— Appears in: The Best Australian Stories 2010 2010; (p. 78-83) Something Special, Something Rare : Outstanding Short Stories by Australian Women 2015; (p. 106-112) Zoetrope : All Story , Spring vol. 20 no. 1 2016; The High Places 2016; (p. 175-183)
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