After the Carnage (Tara June Winch, UQP)

Tara June Winch focsuses on shared humanity in this collection of short stories. Her protagonists belong to groups dismissed by the white, straight, middle-class eye: in ‘Happy’, a gay couple are doomed pet-sitters who face every housesitter’s worst nightmare; ‘Failure to Thrive’ centres on a young Nigerian man in New York who meditates on prejudice and privilege; and ‘The Last Class’ follows new migrants in a language class in France. The latter is easily the best in the collection and was shortlisted for the Overland Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize. Winch’s stories span Europe, Asia, North America and Australia, bringing to mind the expansiveness of Name Le’s The Boat. As evidenced by stories such as honeymoon-gone-wrong ‘Meat House’, Winch enjoys writing scenes where tensions boil over, but the terse form allows no space for that tension to bubble. Winch’s first book Swallow the Air won several awards, and had a similar vignette-style. After the Carnage, in comparison, feels clumsy, though thoughtful in its overarching theme: after the carnage of human destruction, we are all people. And in our basest desires and needs, we are all the same.

Lou Heinrich is a journalist, writer and copywriter who has been published in Guardian Australia, Daily Life, and InDaily

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