Glimpses of childhood, old age – and the dangerous bits in between.
Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, but always perceptive, these short stories will delight readers as I turn from observing my wild animal neighbours to write about my fellow humans in their hopeful stumble through time — ‘life’.
This collection of fictional stories is linked by short commentaries on my own evolving life, as candid as my readers have come to expect.
Many of these stories are award-winners, but previously only available in literary journals or anthologies, so are here brought together for the first time.
Rich Land Wasteland involved me in the fights for threatened communities, people and places, against fossil fuels, and for our environment and action on climate change, and I have stayed involved. But it has meant I neglected my fiction for too long and I have finally realised I may be running out of time. With this collection, I aim to try to keep doing both.
It was said that reading The Woman on the Mountain might change your life; reading Peeping through my fingers will surely enhance it, as the stories and stages ring memorably true.
| Peeping through my fingers Print book 220 pages ISBN: 978-0-6456106-0-4 r.r.p. $29.95 (inc p&p) |
To symbolise the stages of life that my stories cover, Growing Up, Grown Up? and Growing Old, I have even dared include a few old photos from those that survived the 2021 flood, when I lost so much.
I chose this one, likely taken by a Parramatta street photographer of me at around three, because I seem to be looking into the future and not liking what I am seeing at all. I was a serious little girl… and maybe wiser than I knew.