A century of family secrets starts to unravel when Benedict Waters is summoned to an audience with an old friend of his mother. He is seduced by her storytelling and it takes time and an astonishing revelation before he realises that it is his own family he has been hearing about, his own life that is being undone.
From the Blue Mountains to the Hawkesbury and from Sydney to the south coast of New South Wales, The Fern Tattoo takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey through several generations of three families. We meet a range of extraordinary characters including a bigamist bishop, a librarian tattooed from neck to knee, a young girl who kills her best friend in a tragic shooting accident and a pair of lovers who live each other's lives for years after they have separated. As with all families, there are lost loves, tragic passions and unspoken (sometimes unspeakable) histories.
In the following symposium, critics Phillip A. Ellis and Charles Lovecraft address several poets and their works within the realm of weird fiction, spotlighting a variety of themes and issues in this sorely neglected field of study. The critics, established poets in their own right, work towards establishing a clear template for further studies and readings which the editors of Studies in Australian Weird Fiction see as essential to readers of weird fiction, within Australian (sic) and abroad.
In the following symposium, critics Phillip A. Ellis and Charles Lovecraft address several poets and their works within the realm of weird fiction, spotlighting a variety of themes and issues in this sorely neglected field of study. The critics, established poets in their own right, work towards establishing a clear template for further studies and readings which the editors of Studies in Australian Weird Fiction see as essential to readers of weird fiction, within Australian (sic) and abroad.
