Kennedy’s writing is deft, clever, well-paced and understated. Even after his father’s death, Chris finds himself kicking back at his mother’s “nauseating revisionism”.Įventually, though, he finds himself wondering what it would have cost him to answer his father with enthusiasm, instead of shrugging “just for the mean pleasure of feeling his father turn away, defeated”. “Ashes” shows a son reticent to fit into the life narrative his parents want to write for him. The startle reflex and the let-down reflex contain revelations for a new mother disappointed by her partner but whose power over her is receding. “Five Dollar Family” works metaphors of motherhood and babyhood to fine advantage. Their house and life is teetering on the verge but the woman stays up to finish her son’s model of “a little world” due the next day, and finds herself at 5 am searching for moss to create its tiny hills. She realises that her own and her husband’s obsession with mud bricks, toxicity and solar power has buckled under the weight of everyday life that their “grand theory of sustainability” has been modified to “more prosaic reality”. “Tender” shows the mother of small children taking stock on the night before travelling to the city to have a lumpectomy. I’d read a couple of the stories before in other contexts but was pleased to read them again and to find new insights. There are 15 short stories in her latest book, Like a House on Fire, and all live and breathe deeply. Cate Kennedy says stories are living, breathing entities that refuse to be corralled by aphorisms.
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