Cirrus@Austlit

'Reaching across continents, these allusive, richly textured stories are unified by moments of dislocation in which certainties are eclipsed by unfamiliar terrain. A last, transforming embrace between Indian lovers heralds their separate journeys into arranged marriages; an elderly woman discovers a kinship with her neighbour through their mutual isolation; a young woman's beauty is ravaged by fire; a schoolteacher, fettered by responsibility, learns from her brash students during a Queensland summer heady with the smell of sugar cane; a decaying amaryllis plant mirrors the pain of the artist who obsessively sketches it, and a woman devastated by her friend's death, is shocked by her own secret exultation in living.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Virago ed.)

The stories chosen chart the emotions and the experiences of human beings living at particular times and in particular places. Collected as the landmark of a new millennium approached, the stories represent an interest at that time in past and future.