It's hard to know to what extent this reflects the general Australian literary short story story landscape right now and to what extent editorial preference, but the stories collected here definitely tend towards the serious - while not generally tilting into the outright sombre, a moodiness hangs over the collection and there's a distinct lack of humour or, for the most part, levity of any kind. Wood's own take: "If anything unifies the stories in this collection, it might be my own preoccupation, which emerged as I read, with what I came to think of as the trio of ghosts, monsters and visitations."
I tended to be drawn to the stories that most actively seek to imagine different realities (often with a dash of the poetic) and - separate category - those that offer, and deliver, something a bit plot or mystery-driven. Plenty of very established writers are represented, but my favourite is probably "Coca-Cola Birds Sing Sweetest in the Morning" by Elizabeth Tan (who seems to be just getting started), sweet, gentle and sharp and hitting a register that manages to be both familiar and a touch strange; also James Bradley's "Martian Triptych" and, in a different vein, Trevor Shearston's "A Step, a Stumble", which is one of those seemingly unremarkable observationalisty realist type stories that slips under the skin.
[Update 1/3/18: You never quite know which are the stories that will linger. A year on and I find that Fiona McFarlane's colossal (different from giant) squid story "Good News for Modern Man" often surfaces in my mind.]
I tended to be drawn to the stories that most actively seek to imagine different realities (often with a dash of the poetic) and - separate category - those that offer, and deliver, something a bit plot or mystery-driven. Plenty of very established writers are represented, but my favourite is probably "Coca-Cola Birds Sing Sweetest in the Morning" by Elizabeth Tan (who seems to be just getting started), sweet, gentle and sharp and hitting a register that manages to be both familiar and a touch strange; also James Bradley's "Martian Triptych" and, in a different vein, Trevor Shearston's "A Step, a Stumble", which is one of those seemingly unremarkable observationalisty realist type stories that slips under the skin.
[Update 1/3/18: You never quite know which are the stories that will linger. A year on and I find that Fiona McFarlane's colossal (different from giant) squid story "Good News for Modern Man" often surfaces in my mind.]
