'Sometimes a book has a mysterious power over readers. Conventionally the power is explained by theme, plot, character, narrative, style. This chapter, written by a novelist using an interdisciplinary approach, draws on the work of turn-of-the century neuroscientist John Briggs and more recently neuroscientist Professor Liane Gabora to look at a book’s power from a creator’s point of view. Apart from “just scribbling”, the reason for creating a book is not apparent to this novelist at first, but appears gradually during the writing as “an inkling” with multidimensional “fingerprints” of style and voice, and towards the end of the creation, feels to her as affirming, authentic and ultimately, healing. This healing may be contagious, and sensed by the reader. In the following chapter, the novelist describes the creating of her new unpublished but commissioned novel when the inkling refused to arrive; and how she had to – in Heidegger’s words – “wait upon” it, rather than “wait for” it.'

Source: Abstract.

'Do You Love Me or What? is a collection of eight sparkling, nuanced short stories from one of Australia’s most celebrated and loved writers. Written in elegant, shimmering prose, Sue’s stories are woven with themes encompassing love, loss and yearning, memory and identity, the desert and water, and people who live on the periphery of society. Her sentences are spare and evocative, yet paint fully realised pictures that speak of the poignant, shared experiences of the nature of relationships, past and present.'

'Kate, a lonely city woman and reluctant student, is asked by her teachers to travel to the middle of the Australian desert to record a dying Aboriginal woman singing an ancient song. She accepts because she believes that she might be able to reunite with a childhood love and solve the mystery of her past.

But once there, she′s confronted by an Aboriginal culture vastly different to her own, and also by the forceful personality of the man who is supposed to help her find the singer. Very soon she is questioning everything she has ever felt about her own country and about her childhood.

Sensitively portrayed, lyrical, and filled with powerful insights about different people′s sense of home and belonging and family, The Oldest Song in the World is a brave and controversial story about discovering the power of one′s own voice and taking care to pay attention to the voice of others.' Source: http://www.harpercollins.com.au/ (Sighted 09/07/2012)