From the Publisher
“[The stories] glow with a radioactive cleverness...it’s great fun to watch them sparkle and fizz...into glorious full-color weirdness...Marvelous.” —
The New York Times Book Review
“Darkly comic...[Bail] resists, by sheer force of invention, the drag of glib moralizing on suburban lifelessness.” —The Washington Post Book World
“[An] entertaining collection...a cross between Orwell and Kafka...reminiscent of Bernard Malamud at his most inspired...Exquisite work from a most unusual master craftsman who’s one of his continent’s finest writers.” —Kirkus Reviews
“An illuminating, dexterously written collection.” —Publishers Weekly
Times Literary Supplement
[Bail] shows a lively inventiveness in finding new forms.
Listener
Explores the relationship between words and meaning, appearance and reality . . . Bail does not rely on tricks.
Times Literary Supplement
[Bail] shows a lively inventiveness in finding new forms.
Publishers Weekly
A host of distinctive, genuine characters, all at the mercy of life's folly and its slapdash potential, parade through Australian writer Bail's unconventional new collection of 14 short stories. Devoid of any kind of unifying theme, the volume includes several tales that play out as bizarre, abstract vignettes, while others are stunningly vivid and affecting, as in the standout opening story "The Seduction of My Sister." In it, a boy who feels that his younger sister is a terrible pest concocts an increasingly dangerous outdoor game with a new neighbor. Lobbing progressively larger household items back and forth over the rooftops makes for hours of amusement, until his sister poses the ultimate dare. The vacuum of smalltown life may have gotten the better of Sid in "Life of the Party." Perched high and dry in his son's tree house, Sid observes as neighbors and friends congregate drunkenly in his backyard for a barbecue he never bothers to host. In "Huebler," a man embarks on the "strange ambitious task" of photographing every living person and cataloguing each in a uniquely identifying category, i.e., "At least one person who may outlive art." In the title story, middle-aged Eric Banerjee, a married Adelaide piano tuner, is drafted in 1943 and sent to Australia's Northern Territory. After surmounting some initial shyness, he bonds with the other men in his troop, conceding that these are indeed "his happiest days." Bail (Homesickness) is at his strongest when writing from the shadowy corners of suburbia, much like A.M. Homes. The book's organizational structure suffers from a jarring irregularity, and a few entries, though they demonstrate the author's love of all things peculiar, seem thrown in as afterthoughts. Still, this is an illuminating, dexterously written collection, wildly uneven but uniformly potent. (May) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Readers who enjoy fanciful, postmodern work in the tradition of Donald Barthelme and Italo Calvino will enjoy this delightful collection of gleefully absurdist short stories by acclaimed Australian writer Bail (Homesickness). Anyone who approaches these stories with patience and an open mind will find many pleasures the least of which are Bail's inventiveness and gentle humor. In "Life of the Party," for example, a suburban husband invites his friends over for a cookout while his wife and children are out of town and then spends the entire time spying on them from his son's treehouse as they enjoy the party without him. "Huebler" features a photographer who is determined to document the existence of everyone alive. He begins by establishing a list of people to photograph, which includes "at least one person who is incapable of sin" and "at least one person who always has the last word." Enthusiastically recommended. Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Kitchen-sink realism and fantastic hyperbole are skillfully blended in this entertaining collection of 14 stories by the Australian author of the highly praised Eucalyptus (1998), etc. Most of the briefer stories, which suggest a cross between Orwell and Kafka, focus on eccentrics and obsessives at odds with either domestic complacency or bureaucratic imperatives—and, generally, those spun from the more bizarre premises work best. For example, in "Life of the Party," a suburbanite hiding in his son's tree house spies on neighbors he's invited to a nonexistent barbecue; "Portrait of Electricity" takes the form of a tour of a museum memorializing a deceased "great man"; and the smalltime investor in "ore" is physically transformed (literally) by his avarice and finickiness. A darker note is struck in "The Drover's Wife," narrated by a dentist whose wife had left him 30 years earlier, and who "finds" her again, as the subject of a vividly realistic painting—which reveals, as do his ingenuous memories of her, an irrepressible spirit unforgivably stifled by his own prudishness and dullness. The best of the longer tales include "Huebler," an amusing fable whose eponymous protagonist aspires to photograph every living human; and "The Seduction of My Sister," whose unnamed narrator describes his adventure with another teenaged boy, tossing old phonograph records over a rooftop, then catching them as they fall. The "game" escalates, including ever-bulkier objects (and becoming a perfect metaphor for adolescent bravado, rebelliousness, and emergent sexuality), as the story moves surely toward its memorable magical-realist ending. Even better is "Camouflage," the tale of a passive, self-effacingpiano tuner who is drafted into the Australian Army in 1943, and finds muted fulfillment in a menial task that is, in its way, a rudimentary "art." It's a wonderful story, reminiscent of Bernard Malamud at his most inspired. Exquisite work from a most unusual master craftsman who's one of his continent's finest writers.
