Like a House on Fire

Cate Kennedy

'Cate Kennedy's anger is a cleansing fire. Her stories ache with small mercies — tender, life-affirming, real.'

Hilary McPhee

'Cate Kennedy writes with the warm understanding and cold precision of a master.'

David Malouf

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'Cate Kennedy is a singular artist who looks to the ordinary in a small rural community and is particularly astute on exploring the fallout left by the aftermath of the personal disasters that change everything.'

Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

From prize-winning short-story writer Cate Kennedy comes a new collection to rival her highly acclaimed Dark Roots. In Like a House on Fire, Kennedy once again takes ordinary lives and dissects their ironies, injustices and pleasures with her humane eye and wry sense of humour. In ‘Laminex and Mirrors’, a young woman working as a cleaner in a hospital helps an elderly patient defy doctor’s orders. In ‘Cross-Country’, a jilted lover manages to misinterpret her ex’s new life. And in ‘Ashes’, a son accompanies his mother on a journey to scatter his father’s remains, while lifelong resentments simmer in the background. Cate Kennedy’s poignant short stories find the beauty and tragedy in illness and mortality, life and love.

'Cate Kennedy's anger is a cleansing fire. Her stories ache with small mercies — tender, life-affirming, real.'

Hilary McPhee

'Cate Kennedy writes with the warm understanding and cold precision of a master.'

David Malouf

View all reviews

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 210mm × 135mm

Extent:288pp

ISBN (13):9781922070067

RRP:$29.99

Pub date:26 Sep 2012

Rights Held: World

Rights Sold: Audio (Audible)

High-res cover:Download Image

AWARDS

2013 ALS Gold Medal - Long-listed 2013 Kibble Award - Short-listed 2013 Steele Rudd Award, Queensland Literary Awards - Winner 2013 Stella Prize - Short-listed

CATEGORIES / tags

AUTHOR

Cate Kennedy

Cate Kennedy is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won the People’s Choice Award in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2010. She is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has been published widely. Her first collection, Dark Roots, was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. She is also the author of a travel memoir, Sing, and Don’t Cry, and the poetry collections Joyflight, Signs of Other Fires and The Taste of River Water, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry in 2011. She lives on a secluded bend of the Broken River in north-east Victoria.

Dark Roots

Cate Kennedy

RRP: $24.99 Pub date: 26 Sep 2012 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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The Taste of River Water

Cate Kennedy

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The World Beneath

Cate Kennedy

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Thirst

Marina Yuszczuk

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Gifted

Suzumi Suzuki

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Diving, Falling

Kylie Mirmohamadi

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Bear

Julia Phillips

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Brothers and Ghosts

Khuê Ph?m

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Liu Hong

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Manny and the Baby

Varaidzo

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Gerbrand Bakker

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Hanna Johansson

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Miranda Darling

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Can’t I Go Instead

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