Cirrus@Austlit

'Peter Craven’s third annual anthology of “best” Australian stories contains a mixture of twenty-four stand-alone stories and extracts from longer works-in-progress. It is clear that the purpose-built short fiction better exemplifies the skills of crafty concision. The book signals a welcome revival of aspects of the Lawson-Furphy tradition of masculine folk narrative adapted for the postmodern metropolis. Jack Hibberd’s “Christ Stopped at Echuca” takes the tall tale on extravagant parodic flights but is rather too long. Brian Matthews jousts with versions of traditional Australian masculinity in the setting of a university tutorial. The grafting of literary sophistication onto masculine oral culture takes a witty turn also in Gerald Murnane’s mannered tale of a creative-writing teacher’s recognition that his assessment methods are derived from those used in horse racing.'  (Introduction)