β Scribed by Sean O'Beirne
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
This brilliant collection mixes the storytelling originality of George Saunders and Lydia Davis with a sensibility all its own, taking the reader on an extraordinary tour of an old and a new Australia.
A woman on a passenger ship in 1958 gets involved with a young, wild Barry Humphries. A man looks back to the 1970s and his time as a member of Australiaβs least competent scout troop. In 1988, a teenage boy recalls his sexual initiation, out on the tanbark. In 2015, two sisters text in Kmart about how to manage their irascible, isolated mum.
Then, in the near future, a racist demagogue addresses the press the day after his electoral triumph. As the cities heat up and lose their water, a lady from one of the βbetter suburbsβ makes every effort to get her family into an exclusive gated community.
Outstandingly original, bitingly satirical and written in a remarkable range of voices, A Couple of Things Before the End is a powerful vision of where we are β and where we may be headed.
βThese voices, so superbly heard and rendered, threw me into fits of laughter and slyly broke my heart.β βHelen Garner
βAstonishing β¦ an inventive collection of missives from the end of history. Complicated and savage and difficult and funny and melancholy, itβs both harsh and a caress. How do we speak and write into a future? I think Sean OβBeirne is showing us one way of doing it.β βChristos Tsiolkas
βOβBeirne inflects his identifiably Australian characters with a darkly comic and empathetic voice β¦ altogether, this collection invokes [our] questionable past, ironic present and disturbing future.β βBooks Publishing
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
**This brilliant collection mixes the storytelling originality of George Saunders and Lydia Davis with a sensibility all its own, taking the reader on an extraordinary tour of an old and a new Australia.** A woman on a passenger ship in 1958 gets involved with a young, wild Barry Humphries. A man
**This brilliant collection mixes the storytelling originality of George Saunders and Lydia Davis with a sensibility all its own, taking the reader on an extraordinary tour of an old and a new Australia.** A woman on a passenger ship in 1958 gets involved with a young, wild Barry Humphries. A
**Soon to be a Netflix original movie, this****deeply scary and intensely unnerving novel follows a couple in the midst of a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease. You will be scared. But you won't know why...** _I'm thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It
In this deeply suspenseful and irresistibly unnerving debut novel, a man and his girlfriend are on their way to a secluded farm. When the two take an unexpected detour, she is left stranded, wondering if there is any escape at all. What follows is a twisted unraveling that will haunt you long after
**SOON TO BE A NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM DIRECTED BY CHARLIE KAUFMAN** **AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016** "*I'm Thinking of Ending Things* is one of the best debut novels I've ever read. Iain Reid has crafted a tight, ferocious little book, with a persistent tenor of suspense that tightens and mounts