A Couple of Things Before the End: Stories

Author(s): Sean O'Beirne

Fiction

This brilliant collection mixes the storytelling originality of George Saunders and Lydia Davis with a sensibility all its own, taking the reader on an extraordinary tour of old and new Australia - and into a very frightening future.


A woman on a passenger ship in 1958 gets involved with a young, wild Barry Humphries. A man looks back to the 1970s, and his time as a member of Australia's least competent scout troop. In 1988, a teenage boy recalls his sexual initiation, out on the tanbark. In 2015, two sisters text in Kmart about how to manage their irascible, isolated mum. Then, in the near future, a racist demagogue - a kind of Australian Trump - talks to the press the day after his electoral triumph. And as the cities heat up and lose their water, a lady from one of the 'better suburbs' makes every effort to get her family into a gated community. This is Australia, in all its glories and its foibles - and its insularity and fear. These stories are a reflection of where we are now, and where we may be headed.


Bitingly satirical, outstandingly original and written in a remarkable range of voices, A Couple of Things Before the End is a stand-out fiction debut of 2020.

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Product Information

Shortlisted NSW Premier's Literary UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing 2021

Shortlisted for the QLD Premier’s Steel Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection 2021

General Fields

  • : 9781760641283
  • : Black Inc.
  • : Black Inc.
  • : 0.22
  • : January 2020
  • : 1.6 Centimeters X 13.6 Centimeters X 20.8 Centimeters
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Sean O'Beirne
  • : Paperback
  • : 2019
  • : 224
  • : FA