Award winning novelist and short story writer Amanda Lohrey returns as the editor of this annual collection of short fiction, The Best Australian Stories 2015 an anthology from Black Inc. Press. After receiving over 600 submissions, Lohrey chose just 20 for inclusion in this book. She has selected exceptional, inventive and surprising short fiction.
In the same way that Trigger Warning, the new best-selling collection of short stories from Neil Gaiman, pulls together in one volume an unusual array of genres and approaches to writing short fiction, this volume also steps beyond normal genre boundaries to include fantasy, alternative history, and satire from a diverse range of voices.
Julie Koh’s story ‘The Level Playing Field’ is a surreal black satire exploring one of Australia’s great cultural myths. The central characters, all artists, live in the sewers and underground tunnels below the Level Playing Field carrying out unpaid maintenance work as they wait for a chance to play on the field. The wit is incisive and biting, the vision disturbingly perceptive.
‘Better Things’ by Balli Kaur Jaswal gives a strong sense of the complexities and the challenges faced by the protagonist Rohan, an Indian immigrant in contemporary Australia. On the phone to his wife in India he describes the house made of red brick that he has found for her to live in when she comes to join him in Australia. He feels relieved when her visa is delayed as all he can actually afford is a shared floor space with five people sharing a two bedroom flat. Rohan keeps elaborating the story of the house he has found to his wife in their phone conversations, ‘Because what would happen if it did not come true. Enough disappointment hovered in the cramped spaces of his flat; hope was a private precious thing.’ Named ‘Best Young Australian Novelist’ by The Sydney Morning Herald in 2014, this story shows Balli Kaur Jaswal’s short fiction is a force to be reckoned with.
The collection includes more established writers such as Cate Kennedy, whose short story collection Like a House on Fire was a winner at the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards. Her story ‘Puppet Show’ distills the trajectory of an entire marriage through her description of the couples’ honeymoon in Bali.
The pleasures of this collection are many and varied with each story containing the ‘hit’ that Amanda Lohrey describes as the essential ingredient that informed her selection process.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
The Best Australian Stories 2015
Edited by Amanda Lohrey
Contributors: Goldie Goldbloom, John A Scott, Claire Corbett, Cate Kennedy, Melissa Beit, Colin Oehring, Gay Lynch, Eleanor Limprecht, Julie Koh, Jo Lennan, Omar Musa, Ryan O’Neill, Sarah Klenbort, Jo Case, Balli Kaur Jaswal, Jennifer Down, Nick Couldwell, Nicola Redhouse, Annette Trevitt and Mark Smith
Black Inc.
Paperback, 240 pages, RRP: $29.99
