'The In-Between is Christos Tsiolkas consciously yoking himself to Australian literature in a historical sense. It begins with an epigraph from Patrick White’s The Tree of Man, another novel by a gay Australian writer which is about time and change more than it is about the relationship between two people, even if it is anchored by their marriage and the making of a homestead on stolen land in New South Wales. This slipping of self and time is exactly where Tsiolkas’s novel locates itself.' (Introduction)

'The instructions on the seed packets are clear. Damage the seed with sandpaper, cover with boiling water for a day, plant singly and cover with wood ash. It’s a simulation of a fire. The seed is a couple of millimetres long, dark, with the beginning of a root dry at its side, as long as the seed itself. I imagine its unfolding: the pale root extends, the cotyledons open. Compare these to basil or lettuce seeds, tiny specks that must be sown shallow into moist earth and covered in about a millimetre of dirt.' (Introduction)

 (Publication abstract)

'Nan is driving me to school because Mum lost her licence for drink driving. It's my first year of high school. She's tired from taking care of me and my cousin. Starting to forget things. Around the corner from school she rear-ends the car in front of us. The bonnet of the car crumples. Her teeth fall out into the footwell. I get out of the car. Blue fluid is leaking onto the ground underneath it. She refuses to get out until she finds her teeth. I insist I am fine to go to school. I get to my locker and start to cry a bit. A pretty girl from my class hugs me in the way you hug people you don't know very well and I choke out 'car crash' when she asks what happened. I start taking the train to school.' (Publication abstract)