Literary trends are frequently and cyclically trumpeted on the Australian publishing scene: the memoir boom, the decline of fiction, the death of the literary novel. Gail Jones’s work proves that rumours of the latter’s demise are exaggerated. Jones has published three previous books and each has made a splash locally; both collections of stories – House of Breathing (1992) and Fetish Lives (1997) – and her début novel, Black Mirror (2002), garnered prizes. Jones’s second novel, Sixty Lights, is set to enhance her reputation, especially as she is now published by the prestigious UK publisher Harvill Press.