“These men are tough guy know-it-alls with me-against-the-world mentalities. Men who see themselves as superior to those around them. We, the readers, are bewitched by their inner lives….”

Jauss’s characters frequently fail to accept comfort and even more frequently are locked inside their own emotional ice.

In this beautifully written novel, Winterer takes us on an expedition into the Australian bush and the depths of faith.

Readers finish the novel having learned that beauty invariably comes at a price: physical and psychological, personal and professional. It destroys everyone who seeks it.

The landscape of the novel is ghost-haunted. The dead crouch around these characters, blighting them. But the murder of a young boy at Glory Days—the tragic consequence of the fact that Footer can’t find enough ways to spread his misery around and Luann is enthralled by him—is particularly wrenching.

Indeed, we are all composites of contradictions, mysteries unto ourselves, forever zinging between obstacles like a pinball. This is why we tell stories, to convince ourselves that the world is not without reason.

These stories could be read in an hour, but to understand them, the reader should stop after each one, for the express purpose of thinking. Or rather, dreaming, for they are rather like dreams, these curiously tilted, somewhat wacky, often startling small stories.

This is a collection about sexuality, belonging, the unexplainable compulsion and magnetism toward chosen lovers. It’s also about pleasure, agency, consent, and the marginalized female body.

A well-tended, predictable life, upended in seconds, seems altered forever.