Overview
In short vignettes and longer stories, Josephine Rowe explores the idea of things that are left behind: souvenirs, scars, prejudice. These beautifully wrought, bittersweet stories capture everyday life in restrained poetic prose, merging themes of collective memory and guilt, permanence and impermanence, and inherited beliefs. A mother moves north with her young children who watch her and try to decipher her buried grief. Two photographers document a nation’s guilt in pictures of its people’s hands. An underground club in Western Australia plays jazz to nostalgic patrons dreaming of America’s Deep South. A young woman struggles to define herself among the litter of objects an ex-lover has left behind.Reviews
“Josephine Rowe . . . writes clear, polished prose. Her tales are all succinct . . . we get glimpses, the corners of other people’s lives.” —Sunday AgeAuthor Biography
Josephine Rowe is the author of the short story collection How a Moth Becomes a Boat, and her poetry and fiction have appeared in Best Australian Poems, Best Australian Stories, Griffith Review, the Iowa Review, Meanjin, and Overland. She was a participant of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.