North of Nowhere, South of Loss [Anglais] [Relié]

The Australian rainforest and the humid American South are the suffocating backdrops for most of these brooding, densely lyrical 14 stories by Hospital (Oyster; Due Preparations for the Plague; etc.). "For Mr. Voss or Occupant" begins with a feeling of foreboding, as Laura White moves herself and her daughter into a house that may be haunted by the very real presence of its former occupant, and ends abruptly with a foreshadowed but still shocking conclusion. A set of four connected stories explores the relationship of Philippa and Brian, friends since childhood in Brisbane. Philippa, an artist, frequently slips into flights of fancy from which Brian, a rational scientist, calls her back. In "Unperformed Experiments," Philippa dreams of Brian and worries that he is in trouble. In "Cape Tribulation," Philippa's nightmares are realized as Brian, worn down by overwork, succumbs to a world of hallucination, populated by ideas and fantasies that could well have been borrowed from Philippa. "And now this comeuppance: he is having her nightmares." Hospital's trademark focus on interior thoughts can be wearing, but welcome relief is provided by dialogue-rich stories such as the lively "Frames and Wonders," which follows a photographer and his lover on a chase through an ancient forest as he tries to capture her in photographic images. These short stories unfold like poems, compact and mysterious, with clues buried within.
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The haunting floral scent of frangipani permeates this riveting short-story collection from the Australian author of the novel Due Preparations for the Plague [BKL My 15 03]. Hospital's strength lies in capturing her character's interior lives with a poet's grace and precision. The subjects of each story vary, from a mother and daughter whose new home is threatened by its mysterious previous tenant to lovers who reimagine their affair through a series of photographs, but the most powerful are those featuring childhood friends Brian and Philippa, whose intense bond may still not be enough to save them from their inner demons. The collection is thematically linked: each story explores the geographies and memories that define and bind us even as they change shape over time. How we embroider past events or alter and manipulate memories from actual occurrences are key elements in many of the tales. Like Patrick White's solitary explorer Voss (to whom one story alludes), Hospital's characters are continually in search of a homeland they may never return to and, perhaps, will never find. Misha Stone
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There is no denying the elegance or intellectual insight of these stories.

These internationally-acclaimed stories chart the author's nomadic trajectory from Deep North Australia to America's Deep South.

In these prize-winning stories, Janette Turner Hospital explores the infinite incarnations of loss—lovers meeting again in midlife re-experience, through the memory of photographs both real and imagined, the passion that both frightened and thrilled them; a young dental hygienist adrift, living in a hostel in northern Australia, receives a heart-wrenching visit from her drug-dependent brother; a mother and adolescent daughter move into a new house, and their sense of safety is shaken when the previous owner reappears, desperate to reclaim what he has lost. Hospital's characters oscillate between estrangement and intense connectedness, between a permanent sense of dislocation and a yearning to belong.

Janette Turner Hospital, author of seven novels including Oyster and Due Preparations for the Plague, is Distinguished Carolina Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. She lives in Columbia, South Carolina.