Bennett jogs along the country bitumen an anxious man, his CRETE hat guarding against the magpie's deadly swoop. Who is he, where has Jasmine gone, why is he overwhelmed by a sense of doom? Pat-pat, pat-pat, pat-pat ...his dogged feet propel him inexorably into a comic nightmare. 'When I sit down at the desk I can feel my characters cringe,' Nabokov once remarked. The characters in Magpie might well cringe as they are put through their hoops by two of Australia's leading writers in a novel that is part collaboration, part argument and always irreverent fun. 'A satire of the perils of publishing and the anxieties of authorship, Magpie ends as a playful parody of certain trends in literary theory ...an audacious and entertaining romp.' -(Source: Australian Bookseller and Publisher)
