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'Elizabeth posts a 'room for rent' notice in Trevor's bookshop and is caught off-guard when Trevor answers the ad himself. She expected a young student not a middle-aged bookseller whose marriage has fallen apart. But Trevor is attracted to Elizabeth's house because of the empty shed in her backyard, the perfect space for him to revive the artistic career he abandoned years earlier. The face-blind, EH Holden-driving Elizabeth is a solitary and feisty book editor, and she accepts him, on probation...
'In this poignant yet upbeat novel the past keeps returning in the most unexpected ways. Elizabeth is at the beck and call of her ageing mother, and the associated memories of her childhood in a Rajneesh community. Trevor's Polish father disappeared when Trevor was fifteen, and his mother died not knowing whether he was dead or alive. The authorities have declared him dead, but is he?
'The Returns is a story about the eccentricities, failings and small triumphs that humans are capable of, a novel that pokes fun at literary and artistic pretensions, while celebrating the expansiveness of art, kindness and friendship.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Miles Franklin Literary Award 2020 Shortlist Reading Guide
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: ABC News [Online] , July 2020;'Stories of trauma — personal, communal and national — dominate the Miles Franklin Award, Australia's most prestigious literary prize, in its 63rd year.'
-
Unseen Shapes of Ourselves
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , April vol. 24 no. 1 2020;
— Review of The Returns 2019 single work novel 'The Returns is something of a sequel to Salom’s Waiting (2017): both novels are set in a vividly evoked North Melbourne and both chart the evolving relationship of eccentric – if very differently classed – characters. The Returns cheekily acknowledges this connection when book-seller, Trevor, stares out of his shop and sees Waiting’s unforgettable Big and Little gazing straight back at him: Salom’s readers know who Big and Little are, and Trevor would too if he’d bother to read the copy of Waiting that resides on his shop’s shelves. Trevor is, of course, oblivious to the authorial joke he is sitting in. Overweight, about-to-bedivorced, limpy, and prone to gloom, this ‘mordant humourist’ (39) is too busy worrying about his post-marriage future. Then, Elizabeth appears. She is skinny, orthorexic, divorced, and a sufferer of prosopagnosia: she cannot recognise faces. She works-from-home as an editor and is looking for a lodger. Trevor soon moves in, befriends her equally limpy dog, takes over the cooking, and turns her shed into a studio: he wants to ‘fetch back’ his abandoned youth as a ‘wayward’ bachelor artist (59).' (Introduction) -
Love Song Struck in a Minor Key
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 7 September 2019; (p. 21)
— Review of The Returns 2019 single work novel'Returns is a novel for grown-ups, though it contains few of them — grown-ups being a species so rare these days as to be functionally extinct.' (Introduction)
-
'Controlled Hallucinations'
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 414 2019; (p. 31)
— Review of The Returns 2019 single work novel'A bookseller, Trevor, sits in his shop in Melbourne making conversation with his customers: an exasperating mixture of confessional, hesitant, deranged, and disruptive members of the public. One man stalks him, armed with an outrageous personal demand; another tries to apologise for assaulting him. The apology is almost as unnerving as the attack. The bookshop is a kind of theatre, with a ceiling mirror reflecting the tops of Trevor’s customer’s heads. Trevor has a seat onstage at ground level, and a seat in the gods. Elizabeth, a book editor, steadies herself against his windows as she begins to faint. His book display is not responsible for this partial loss of consciousness; she has a medical problem and Trevor offers her a cup of tea.' (Introduction)
-
The Drug of Otherness : The Returns by Philip Salom
2019
single work
essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , July 2019;'Philip Salom’s fourth novel The Returns is the story of two middle-aged characters: Elizabeth and Trevor. Elizabeth is an editor whose in-house career stalled when she had the temerity to suggest a manuscript by a famous author might require substantial revision. Now she muddles along as a freelancer. Trevor was an aspiring artist, but has come to spend most of his time idling behind the counter of his sleepy North Melbourne bookshop. They meet one day when Elizabeth nearly faints out the front of Trevor’s shop and he comes to her aid. She subsequently asks him to place a notice in his window advertising the spare room she is hoping to rent out. Trevor’s marriage is ending — not acrimoniously, things just seem to have run their course — so he applies to become Elizabeth’s lodger, lured by the opportunity this affords to convert the disused shed in her backyard into a studio and rekindle his artistic practice.' (Introduction)
-
'Controlled Hallucinations'
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 414 2019; (p. 31)
— Review of The Returns 2019 single work novel'A bookseller, Trevor, sits in his shop in Melbourne making conversation with his customers: an exasperating mixture of confessional, hesitant, deranged, and disruptive members of the public. One man stalks him, armed with an outrageous personal demand; another tries to apologise for assaulting him. The apology is almost as unnerving as the attack. The bookshop is a kind of theatre, with a ceiling mirror reflecting the tops of Trevor’s customer’s heads. Trevor has a seat onstage at ground level, and a seat in the gods. Elizabeth, a book editor, steadies herself against his windows as she begins to faint. His book display is not responsible for this partial loss of consciousness; she has a medical problem and Trevor offers her a cup of tea.' (Introduction)
-
Love Song Struck in a Minor Key
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 7 September 2019; (p. 21)
— Review of The Returns 2019 single work novel'Returns is a novel for grown-ups, though it contains few of them — grown-ups being a species so rare these days as to be functionally extinct.' (Introduction)
-
Unseen Shapes of Ourselves
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , April vol. 24 no. 1 2020;
— Review of The Returns 2019 single work novel 'The Returns is something of a sequel to Salom’s Waiting (2017): both novels are set in a vividly evoked North Melbourne and both chart the evolving relationship of eccentric – if very differently classed – characters. The Returns cheekily acknowledges this connection when book-seller, Trevor, stares out of his shop and sees Waiting’s unforgettable Big and Little gazing straight back at him: Salom’s readers know who Big and Little are, and Trevor would too if he’d bother to read the copy of Waiting that resides on his shop’s shelves. Trevor is, of course, oblivious to the authorial joke he is sitting in. Overweight, about-to-bedivorced, limpy, and prone to gloom, this ‘mordant humourist’ (39) is too busy worrying about his post-marriage future. Then, Elizabeth appears. She is skinny, orthorexic, divorced, and a sufferer of prosopagnosia: she cannot recognise faces. She works-from-home as an editor and is looking for a lodger. Trevor soon moves in, befriends her equally limpy dog, takes over the cooking, and turns her shed into a studio: he wants to ‘fetch back’ his abandoned youth as a ‘wayward’ bachelor artist (59).' (Introduction) -
The Drug of Otherness : The Returns by Philip Salom
2019
single work
essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , July 2019;'Philip Salom’s fourth novel The Returns is the story of two middle-aged characters: Elizabeth and Trevor. Elizabeth is an editor whose in-house career stalled when she had the temerity to suggest a manuscript by a famous author might require substantial revision. Now she muddles along as a freelancer. Trevor was an aspiring artist, but has come to spend most of his time idling behind the counter of his sleepy North Melbourne bookshop. They meet one day when Elizabeth nearly faints out the front of Trevor’s shop and he comes to her aid. She subsequently asks him to place a notice in his window advertising the spare room she is hoping to rent out. Trevor’s marriage is ending — not acrimoniously, things just seem to have run their course — so he applies to become Elizabeth’s lodger, lured by the opportunity this affords to convert the disused shed in her backyard into a studio and rekindle his artistic practice.' (Introduction)
-
Miles Franklin Literary Award 2020 Shortlist Reading Guide
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: ABC News [Online] , July 2020;'Stories of trauma — personal, communal and national — dominate the Miles Franklin Award, Australia's most prestigious literary prize, in its 63rd year.'
Awards
- 2020 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards — Fiction Book Award
- 2020 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 2020 longlisted APA Book Design Awards — Best Designed Literary Fiction / Poetry Cover designed by Josh Durham, Design by Committee
