AustLit

'Children conceived under the northern lights are blessed with intelligence and wisdom. It turns out this is a recent urban legend masquerading as ancient knowledge, Still, it has propagated and even appears on the Greenland tourism website, which is where I read it. I did not know this when I visited Greenland, but something about the idea of phantasmal lights had the feel of fate, and it gave me hope.' (Introduction)

'I raised the scalpel to make the first cut into that crenulated piece of flesh and found I couldn’t do it. Here before me was the brain of a sheep, nothing more than a hunk of meat, but I couldn’t help think of sheepy thoughts locked inside those dead cells as though they were exhibits in a museum. Year nine science class, and the brain sat on the desk in front of us on a chopping board—similar to the white plastic one we had in our kitchen at home. It was pinky-grey, a dead sort of colour, mottled with ink-blue veins. The room smelled frightful, formaldehyde but underneath it something earthy, a meaty smell of the kind that wafts from the fridge at the butchers.' (Introduction)

'The wheel rumbled over a piece of roadkill. Ruth glanced in the rear-view mirror, but all that remained was matted flesh and fur.

'She angled the mirror to check on her husband. Slumped in the backseat, head lolling with the motion of the ute, his eyes slitted in that way that made her feel he was watching her — even when he slept.'  (Introduction)
 

'Some people call them milk teeth, or baby teeth, though the scientific term is deciduous teeth. Deciduous, I think of the forest in autumn. An x-ray of a child's head is not so beautiful. Crammed with far too, any teeth, all the cavities and empty spaces of the skull crowded with them; they lie dormant like bulbs beneath a winter soil.' (Introduction)