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'A deeply personal collection filled with reflections on love, death, creativity and healing, from the award-winning author of Bruny and The Museum of Modern Love.
'With rare subtlety and humanity, this novel relocates the difficult path to wonder in us all.' The Christina Stead Prize judges on The Museum of Modern Love
'And then it occurred to me that nothing bad ever happens here.
'Every human life is perfect in its own way. We cannot understand that, because it seems like there is so much suffering. But maybe every life is perfect for we need to know and learn and see and understand. Even when we don't understand, even when the suffering seems unfathomable, does some part of us understand? Could that really be true, I wondered?
'Nothing bad ever happens here...
'My body was shaking violently now. I held onto the rock beneath me as if I was clinging to life itself. Maybe I was. I clung to this life, my life, with all its imperfections and mistakes, with all its joy. I didn't want to go anywhere.
'After a shocking family tragedy transforms Heather Rose's Tasmanian childhood, she becomes 'a seeker of life and all its mysteries'. Heather has spent a lifetime testing boundaries and exploring the connections between love and death, the natural world and the body. Her questing spirit and her strong affinity with nature have inspired and driven her throughout her life-and deeply sustained her in times of darkness. Her words will bring wonder, light and comfort to all who read this astonishing book.
'Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here is a luminous, compelling and utterly surprising memoir by the bestselling author of Stella Prize-winner The Museum of Modern Love and Bruny.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Selected as one of the Guardian Australia best Australian books of 2022
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
-
Heather Rose Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here : A Memoir of Loss and Discovery
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 3-9 December 2022;
— Review of Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here 2022 single work autobiography'Since her debut novel in 1999, Heather Rose has written astutely about the vulnerabilities of people and the sublime beauty of the natural world, particularly her home state of Tasmania. Her Stella Prize-winning The Museum of Modern Love used Marina Abramović’s performance The Artist is Present to explore love, loss and art-making. Bruny, Rose’s 2019 novel, took on international politics, protest and global capital, though it too was very much concerned with family, illness and the stories we tell.' (Introduction)
-
Heather Rose Writes with Raw Beauty about Trauma and ‘hardcore Spiritual Work’ – so Why Does It Leave Me Cold?
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 5 December 2022;
— Review of Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here 2022 single work autobiography'I have to begin my review of acclaimed novelist Heather Rose’s first foray into non-fiction with an admission: I am a deeply unspiritual person. I find “spiritual journey” narratives, generally speaking, solipsistic and tedious: I even grew impatient reading Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha.' (Introduction)
-
Readers Are Hungry for Stories about Trauma. But What Happens to the Authors?
2022
single work
column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 19 November 2022; -
Joy Is My Discipline : Life and Its Contingencies
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 448 2022; (p. 27)
— Review of Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here 2022 single work autobiography 'The Tasmanian childhood recounted by Heather Rose sounds idyllic, to the point of being suspect, a too-perfect vision of wholesome family life. ‘We do not own a television. Books and games, music and friends, the radio and the outdoors are our entertainment,’ she writes. In this paradise of neighbourly trust, ‘no-one locks their doors. We are welcome in everyone’s houses.’ Rose remembers her mother as a domestic goddess: ‘Along with a career, four children and a husband, she bakes and cooks, sews, preserves, sings, embroiders, gardens, arranges flowers, decorates cakes, and makes kayaks and pottery’, while also contriving to be ‘slender, elegant’, and beautiful. At this point, you might wonder if the title – Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here – is not, as you first assumed, meant to be ironic. But how long can this flawless, nostalgic reverie be sustained?' (Introduction)
-
Joy Is My Discipline : Life and Its Contingencies
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 448 2022; (p. 27)
— Review of Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here 2022 single work autobiography 'The Tasmanian childhood recounted by Heather Rose sounds idyllic, to the point of being suspect, a too-perfect vision of wholesome family life. ‘We do not own a television. Books and games, music and friends, the radio and the outdoors are our entertainment,’ she writes. In this paradise of neighbourly trust, ‘no-one locks their doors. We are welcome in everyone’s houses.’ Rose remembers her mother as a domestic goddess: ‘Along with a career, four children and a husband, she bakes and cooks, sews, preserves, sings, embroiders, gardens, arranges flowers, decorates cakes, and makes kayaks and pottery’, while also contriving to be ‘slender, elegant’, and beautiful. At this point, you might wonder if the title – Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here – is not, as you first assumed, meant to be ironic. But how long can this flawless, nostalgic reverie be sustained?' (Introduction) -
Heather Rose Writes with Raw Beauty about Trauma and ‘hardcore Spiritual Work’ – so Why Does It Leave Me Cold?
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 5 December 2022;
— Review of Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here 2022 single work autobiography'I have to begin my review of acclaimed novelist Heather Rose’s first foray into non-fiction with an admission: I am a deeply unspiritual person. I find “spiritual journey” narratives, generally speaking, solipsistic and tedious: I even grew impatient reading Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha.' (Introduction)
-
Heather Rose Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here : A Memoir of Loss and Discovery
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 3-9 December 2022;
— Review of Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here 2022 single work autobiography'Since her debut novel in 1999, Heather Rose has written astutely about the vulnerabilities of people and the sublime beauty of the natural world, particularly her home state of Tasmania. Her Stella Prize-winning The Museum of Modern Love used Marina Abramović’s performance The Artist is Present to explore love, loss and art-making. Bruny, Rose’s 2019 novel, took on international politics, protest and global capital, though it too was very much concerned with family, illness and the stories we tell.' (Introduction)
-
Readers Are Hungry for Stories about Trauma. But What Happens to the Authors?
2022
single work
column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 19 November 2022;
Awards
- 2023 shortlisted Indie Awards — Nonfiction
