Photo: Jonathan Bean/Litfest
The difficulty and fragility of our relationships with those we love – this is the theme that preoccupies the five writers collected here. Between them they explore, in their very different ways, the precarious tension inherent in the intimate connections with others which, as humans, we all crave.
Both Naomi Kruger’s Ivory and Emma Bragg’s cleverly titled Sleeping Dogs portray marriages in crisis, with ordinary domestic situations – the barking of a pet dog, the choosing of a paint colour – unlocking much deeper problems. In both, we see tenderness, patience, bad temper, stubbornness, disappointment, grief and self-absorption all battling and co-existing in such an uneasy balance that the future cannot be certain.
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