AustLit

'The cast of Anne Coombs’s final novel, Glass Houses, is extensive. At the centre is Raymond Tyler, a wealthy, single man in his early 60s, rather reclusive and nervy. He lives in a derelict Gothic mansion over the River Glass, which he has bought outside a country town, Glaston, to be near his friends. A retired antiques dealer, Raymond is restoring the house meticulously, inch by inch, day by day.' (Introduction)

'God Forgets About the Poor opens with a chapter-length monologue: a brilliantly fierce, haunted and hilarious tumble of recollection and editorial harangue, directed by a 70-something Greek–Australian woman to her adult son, an author, insistent that he write a book about her: “Start when I was born. Describe the village and how beautiful it was. On the side of a mountain but in the middle of a forest.”' (Introduction)