Cate Kennedy

A spare but insightful collection of stories, some heartbreaking, some dryly humorous, and some puzzling. Kennedy is very good at illuminating the interior life of her characters, so while each story is only ~10 pages long, the reader gets a real sense of character and internal conflict in those brief pages. Very much recommended.

I truly loved this book, and only a couple of the stories fell just shy of the perfection mark, which is why it gets not quite a full five stars from me. I picked this up from the library for the ANZAC challenge - Cate Kennedy is an Australian author, and I was not familiar with her work. I have been branching out into short story collections, although it is not my favorite format. This collection is different - I loved the humor, the wit, the charm of people caught in the actions of every show more day life. Some of these people are at crossroads moments, and what was unexpected was that in the beginning of most of them, I had no idea of the sex of the main character. You learn that as the story unfolds, but first just the voice that could be from any skin, any gender - just...human. The first story, What Thou and I Did, Till We Loved was sublime; a perfect read for me on what it means to love someone.

And the writing! The writing is gorgeous, and thought and feeling flow with each sentence, taking us along on the journey of each story. The unexpected sharp smack of dark humor and the hum of edginess all woven into the structure that is a paragraph. This collection is a feast for the senses. When I had finished reading it, I wanted nothing more than to turn back to the first story and begin again. Which is just what I did. Highly recommended, even if, like me, short stories are not your favorite. This collection shows how very much can be done with so little - fully-fleshed characters and plot and an advanced story arc all in miniature. Small, but not abridged.

"I watch people sometimes, wonder how they can walk around with the weight of what they know. Wonder if they feel like me, stumbling with lead shoes on the bottom of the ocean, swimming in a sea of the unsayable. It's a mistake we make, thinking that it's words that tell us everything. It's sound that breaks glasses, cracks windows, sends cats up trees. Bats hear more than humans, understand more noise, let alone dogs. Maybe we're just not getting it, standing here listening for sensible speech, dying of loneliness and waiting for whatever it is. How do we know we're not calling and calling all the time, our throats so tight with it, it's too high to hear?" show less

I think this is so good that I'm going out on a limb to predict that it's is going to win the Miles Franklin 2010. It is brilliant.
The last few chapters where Rich and his fifteen year old daughter are in the Labyrinth in the Tasmanian wilderness are breath-taking.
The World Beneath is uniquely Australian. The main action of the novel takes place in the Tasmanian Wilderness, and two of its central characters came of age in the defining political moment of 1983 – the fight to save the show more Franklin River. What is so interesting is the intersection of the intense significance of this moment for Rich and Sandy, with their daughter’s indifference to it. It’s all too long ago for fifteen-year-old Sophie, and she’s heard about it too many times.

The World Beneath takes a while to lure the reader in, because these three characters are each in their own way so tiresome that you don’t want them in your life, not even in the pages of a book! But then before you know it you are there in the Tassie wilderness with Sophie and Rich and it’s so compelling you can’t put it down.
To see the rest of my review, see http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/the-world-beneath-by-cate-kennedy2/ show less

On the surface, the three main characters in Cate Kennedy's debut novel - 15-year-old Sophie and her long-separated parents Rich and Sandy - are wholly unlikeable. Yet as its title suggests, The World Beneath delves deeper, exploring the insecurities and long-held secrets that make people behave as they do. Kennedy skillfully plumbs the depths of parent-child bonds, the environmental movement and the disappointments of middle-age.

Much of the action takes place in the beautifully evoked show more Tasmanian wilderness, where Rich has taken Sophie in a rather whimsical attempt to establish a father-daughter connection. Naturally, Rich's feeble plan is soon blown off-course and Kennedy's writing steadily gathers momentum. The last 50 or so pages are quite breathtaking, and signal Cate Kennedy as a novelist to watch. show less