AustLit

'BACK IN THE EARLY 1980S, though he was still an undergraduate at the University of Newcastle, John Hughes was already being described as a genius. He was the fi rst person in his family to attend university. His grandparents, Ukrainians displaced by World War Two, were, according to him, the only people in Cessnock who spoke a language other than English. Amid the culture of the coalfi elds and their “mistrust of words”, as Hughes put it later, he grew up reading Tolstoy under the bed covers, and imagined himself writing “words of the same power and beauty”. The teachers who clamoured around him were amazed by his erudition. He seemed predestined to write. It was as if he was preordained to become a writer.' (Introduction)

'IT WAS A LATE Saturday morning in the winter of 1995. I had gone to the supermarket nearest my fl at in inner south-eastern suburban Melbourne to buy a version of the single man’s standard weekly groceries. What the various items I put in the supermarket trolley had in common was that they were all chosen, consciously or otherwise, because they could be consumed without much preparation. Living alone, the last thing I wanted was to spend time in the evening preparing batches of food that I knew in advance – because I had eaten my own cooking before – were going to taste awful.' (Introduction)

'WHAT? WHO?  I was holding a book and asking myself these questions. What did I just read? Who wrote this… this parcel of nerves, energy, perception, poetry, philosophy tied with some witty barbed wire? The page was lit. It was also familiar: this was the coup de foudre that lovers feel. Reader, that blow isn’t restricted to people. I had recently felt it with the Italian Elena Ferrante and, more recently still, the French Annie Ernaux.' (Introduction)