AustLit

'When faced with our difficult present, we sometimes turn to the past and swaddle ourselves in nostalgia for whichever time our personal tastes elect as having been “better”. Factory 19, Dennis Glover’s second novel, is a story in which this impulse is enacted on a grand scale.' (Introduction)

'On morning before any of the rest of us are up, Mum hears a report on the radio that at 2 am tomorrow there will be a rare meteor shower. Over the course of the day, she mentions it aloud to no one in particular several times.  I hear my sister explaining that she really needs her sleep because she has an essay due. My dad is hard of hearing, and today that seems to align neatly with these mentions—although I’m ‘not hearing’ it either. Finally, around bedtime, Mum corners me and asks me directly whether, if she comes and wakes me up at two, I’ll come out and walk up the nearby hill to look at the meteor shower with her. I sigh heavily and mutter that I suppose I don’t know what life is for if it isn’t for looking at magical meteor showers.' (Introduction)

'A Theatre for Dreamers, Polly Samson’s third novel, is pages and pages of rapturous fantasy of summer days on a small Greek island at the start of the 1960s. Dazzling sunlight, nude swims in the blue sea, midnight hikes while wrapped in blankets under the stars, stray cat rescues, endless glasses of retsina and ouzo, fresh bread, feta, honey, lemon and olive oil, sardines and grilled octopus and ice-cream. Yes, it is a book for people who wish they could have a holiday right now, and amid the glut of sensory descriptions you really do feel like you’re there – and it’s a really nice feeling. But in a novel of this length, that wealth of atmosphere wants some kind of driving question, or a real plot, to hang itself on.' (Introduction)