Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Fault Lines  by Pierz Newton-John

by
September 2012, no. 344

Fault Lines  by Pierz Newton-John

Spineless Wonders, $19.99 pb, 173 pp, 9780987089762

Fault Lines  by Pierz Newton-John

by
September 2012, no. 344

In this collection of short stories from Pierz Newton-John, the author calls upon the suburban familiarity of a garden weed: couch grass, the fast-spreading pest whose rhizomes grow rapidly in a suffocating network, until the area it covers is ‘strangled’ and the custodian must ‘pull up the entire intractable tangle and start again’. This network of affliction that spreads throughout Newton-John’s characters – disaffection, self-denial, drug dependency, turmoil, ambivalence, sheer despair – is handled nimbly by Newton-John, who wields a superb descriptive talent. Each story ends with the dislodging of some kind of rot, or the threat of destruction, because a situation is no longer sustainable.

Milly Main reviews 'Fault Lines' by Pierz Newton-John

Fault Lines 

by Pierz Newton-John

Spineless Wonders, $19.99 pb, 173 pp, 9780987089762

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.