Fiction

My Boyfriend’s Father by Ben Winch & The Man Who Painted Women by John Newton

by Kevin Brophy •

July 1996, no. 182

My Boyfriend’s Father by Ben Winch

Wakefield Press, $16.96 pb, 222 pp

The Man Who Painted Women by John Newton

Minerva, $15.95 pb, 329 pp

Fiction

My Boyfriend’s Father by Ben Winch & The Man Who Painted Women by John Newton

by Kevin Brophy •

July 1996, no. 182

‘When I was eighteen my boyfriend’s father died in jail.’ This is the opening sentence of Ben Winch’s second novel; it is also the conclusion of the novel and, having got that out of the way, we can settle into the details that will tell us why this man died in jail and what his story means for this now eighteen-year-old woman.

Kevin Brophy

Kevin Brophy has had nine collections of poetry published, as well as works of fiction and collections of essays. He has received the Martha Richardson Medal for poetry and the Calibre Essay Prize. In 2015 he was poet in residence at the B.R. Whiting Library in Rome, and in 2019–20 he is poet in residence at the Keesing Studio in Paris.