Crow’s Breath (John Kinsella, Transit Lounge)

Kinsella’s latest volume is a potpourri of characters and tales, mostly unified by a sense of place in the Australian landscape. Some of these short stories are observations from lives in the country—images of eagles, ant nests and goannas in the harsh Australian bush—and some are darker tales of human (and animal) interactions. A dumpster-diving couple befriend another rubbish-salvaging pair with shocking results. An eerily pale farmer reveals what became of her absent partner during the sparks of bushfire season. A young logging protester’s life is horribly altered. Some of these stories are shocking and unsettling and some more focused on the beauty of the bush, but often with a sinister undertone. That Kinsella is a celebrated poet—winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and the Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry—shines through in his prose. The focus on imagery and allegory sometimes seems to be at the expense of narrative, but Kinsella manages to weave together sentences both evocative and sparse; these stories are devourable, patently Australian and often just a little bit sinister.

Portia Lindsay is general manager for seizure online and a former bookseller