Like a House on Fire

Name: Like a House on Fire
Brand: Penguin Random House NZ
SKU: 9781922070067
Price: 32.0 NZD
Availability: InStock

By Cate Kennedy

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3.46

( 1,578 ratings, 175 reviews)

Summary

Like a House on Fire is a collection of short stories by Cate Kennedy that delves into the intricacies of human relationships and the subtle tensions within everyday life. Each story paints a vivid portrait of ordinary characters facing moments of personal crisis, capturing their hopes, fears, and the small triumphs that shape their existence. The narratives are infused with empathy and keen observation, offering a poignant reflection on the resilience required to navigate life's challenges.
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Format: Paperback / softback

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Like a House on Fire

$32⁰⁰

Elsewhere:

~~$35⁰⁰~~

Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you appreciate poignant and well-crafted short stories that explore the complexities of everyday life, relationships, and personal struggles with insight and empathy. You'll find each tale captures a moment or experience, woven with understated emotion and a keen eye for detail, immersing you in diverse narratives that resonate with authenticity.

Includes stories such as 'Laminex and Mirrors', 'Cross-Country', and 'Ashes'.

From prize-winning short-story writer Cate Kennedy comes a new collection to rival her highly acclaimed Dark Roots.

Description

From prize-winning short-story writer Cate Kennedy comes a new collection to rival her highly acclaimed Dark Roots. In Like a House on Fire, Kennedy once again takes ordinary lives and dissects their ironies, injustices and pleasures with her humane eye and wry sense of humour.

In Laminex and Mirrors, a young woman working as a cleaner in a hospital helps an elderly patient defy doctor's orders. In Cross-Country, a jilted lover manages to misinterpret her ex's new life. And in Ashes, a son accompanies his mother on a journey to scatter his father's remains, while lifelong resentments simmer in the background.

Cate Kennedy's poignant short stories find the beauty and tragedy in illness and mortality, life and love.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy has received high praise for its compelling collection of short stories. Critics describe Kennedy as a master of short fiction, offering heartfelt, moving narratives that delve deeply into the ordinary aspects of life with precision and warmth. The stories are noted for their emotional depth and ability to capture the nuances of everyday experiences and personal challenges.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781922070067

Publisher: Scribe Publications

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 26 September 2012

Country: Australia

Imprint: Scribe Publications

Edition: UK edition

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 135.0mm

Height: 210.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 288

Collections

Cate Kennedy Fiction General Fiction Penguin Books

About the Author

Cate Kennedy is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won the People's Choice Award in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards in 2010. She is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has been published widely. Her first collection, Dark Roots, was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards and for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. She is also the author of a travel memoir, Sing, and Don't Cry, and the poetry collections Joyflight, Signs of Other Fires and The Taste of River Water, which won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry in 2011. She lives on a secluded bend of the Broken River in north-east Victoria.

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The World Beneath

Once, Rich and Sandy were environmental activists, part of a world-famous blockade in Tasmania to save the wilderness. Now, 25 years later, they have settled into the uncomfortable compromises of middle age – although they've gone about it in very different ways. About the only thing they have in common these days is their 15-year-old daughter, Sophie. When Rich decides...

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Dark Roots

In these sublimely sophisticated tales, Cate Kennedy opens up worlds of finely observed detail. Her stories are populated by people at tipping points in their lives—moments that find them poised between a familiar past and an unfamiliar future. In The Testosterone Club, a neglected wife plans an unsavoury revenge on her boorish husband. In Resize, a married couple realise their...

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The Taste of River Water

Disarming, warm, and always accessible, Cate Kennedy's poems make ordinary experiences glow. Everything that suffuses her well-loved prose is here: compassion, insight, lyrical precision, and the clear, minimalist eye that reveals how life can turn on a single moment. Musing on the undercurrents and interconnections between legacy, memory, motherhood, and the natural world, the poems in this exhilarating collection begin...

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Sing, and Dont Cry

Sing, and Don't Cry is Cate Kennedy's sensual and touching evocation of her time spent working as a volunteer in small town Mexico. The people she comes to love in Tequisquiapan, and their gusto for celebration, pilgrimage and family, force her to cast a penetrating light on her own Western values and ways. 'What is truly essential, and who is...

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