Product Description

From the awkward strain of dissolving relationships to the revealing vagaries of chance occurrences upon ordinary people, the voices that inhabit "Dark Roots" speak eloquently of the hidden motivations that propel us all to act. Kennedy's characters hover at tipping points in their lives, moments in which apparently insignificant decisions turn out to have devastating emotional consequences and even, sometimes, the power of life and death. In just a few pages, Cate Kennedy captures whole lives with masterful narrative restraint - the regrets, the successes, the unintended ironies. She reveals how relationships can break down either slowly, through the accumulations of grievances, or suddenly, in a rush, with one false step. But she can also show how the love for a partner or a child can save us. "Dark Roots" is by turns heartbreaking, richly comic and, above all, unerringly human.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4751104 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Review
"'Dark Roots announces the arrival of a major talent... Cate Kennedy has a near pitch-perfect voice and a feeling for the precise moment when stars move in the cosmos.' Peter Temple, Age 'Stunning... incredibly spare and gifted writing. This collection is a joy to read.' Sunday Age 'A revelation... dark, moody, funny and provocative, often in the same story.' Australian"

A collection of short fiction from Australian Kennedy - the author's American debut.In the opening story, physical therapists stick pins in a comatose woman, looking for the faintest suggestion of consciousness. This image could serve as a metaphor for the collection as a whole: Pain is a sign of life, because to live - and especially to love - is to hurt. Kennedy has a keen eye for the weak spot, for the fault lines in a relationship and the fissures that compromise a character's ego. And she's adept at depicting moments of transition and transformation. She captures both the imperceptible creep of aging and its flashes of horrible epiphany in the title story and in "A Pitch Too High for the Human Ear." Both "Resize" and "Kill or Cure" are sobering meditations on marriage, and "Wheelbarrow Thief" concerns a woman whose pregnancy compels her to question just how happy she is with her lover. This is not to suggest that Kennedy's vision is uniformly bleak. Unplanned pregnancy is a catalyst for a woman's reinvention in "Soundtrack." Light achieves equipoise with dark in "Direct Action" and "The Correct Name of Things." And "The Light of Coincidence" and "Habit" are both exquisitely crafted and lovely in their hopefulness. Indeed, while it does say something about Kennedy's outlook that the happiest relationship she describes is the one in which one partner is in a coma, and that her most resounding paean to life is narrated by a woman dying of cancer, it's also telling that her best stories are also her most joyful. Stories rendered with considerable craft and informed by a clear-eyed, unsentimental empathy. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Cate Kennedy is an award-winning writer who has twice won the Age short story competition. 'Cold Snap', which appears in Dark Roots, was published in the New Yorker. She is also the author of the travel memoir Sing and Don't Cry: A Mexican Journal and two poetry collections. She is currently at work on her first novel.