MANDY SAYER’S AUSTRALIAN LONG STORY

Let’s face it; loads of people don’t make time to read novels these days. Finishing one can take months, by which time the protagonist’s name has been forgotten at least three times. Meanwhile the short story, the novel’s oft-sought alternative, can incite the feeling that life is passing too quickly.

Acclaimed local author Mandy Sayer (Mood Indigo, Dreamtime Alice, Velocity) brings together a collection of long stories in The Australian Long Story; stories that fuse the intensity of the short story with the complexity of the novel. Nine carefully selected long stories written by some of Australia’s most well known and loved authors unfold in this rather captivating literary tome. Relative newcomer Nam Le’s Halflead Bay, a lyrical coming of age story, sits alongside Elizabeth Jolley’s 1979 beauty Grasshoppers and the familiar intimacy of Tim Winton and Peter Carey, while Louis Nowra’s Ten Anecdotes About Lord Howe Island offers some welcome humour.

Sayer has chosen and collated these stories as definitive of the ‘Australian’ long story. Despite being set in various locations around Australia and across time periods, there is a sense of something shared amongst them. According to Sayer, one aspect of this arises from the fact that, “many of the authors are able to combine formal language and Australian vernacular in the narration.” Rather than hitting the reader in the face with aggressive Australiana, here vernacular is employed to cut to the heart of ‘stuff’ between people. Love, loss, grief and anxiety collide in poetic, if at times slightly nostalgic, tellings of Australian stories.

The Australian Long Story may just be the thing to get you reading again (and if not you, perhaps someone you know – at $39.95 it is a ridiculously good purchase).

The Australian Long Story, edited by Mandy Sayer, Hamish Hamilton, 538pp, $39.95, available at all good book stores