Fiction

Arms Race by Nic Low

by Gretchen Shirm •

September 2014, no. 364

Text Publishing, $27.99 pb, 248 pp

Fiction

Arms Race by Nic Low

by Gretchen Shirm •

September 2014, no. 364

Characters on the verge of a breakthrough populate this impressive début short story collection. An aspiring artist in ‘Making It’ is unsure whether a tilt at greatness is worth the personal sacrifice. In ‘Scar’, a middle-aged geologist feels conflicted by prospective fatherhood and observes, ‘Against that slow patience of stone the need to reproduce had always seemed like vanity.’ Low’s stories cover an ambitious range of locations from Melbourne to Mongolia; his prose is energetic and inspired.

Gretchen Shirm

Gretchen Shirm’s collection of interwoven short stories Having Cried Wolf was published in September 2010 and was shortlisted for the UTS/Glenda Adams Award for New Writing. In 2011, she was named as aSydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelist. Her writing has been published in The Australian, Best Australian Stories 2011, Review of Australian Fiction, Southerly, Sydney Review of Books and The Saturday Paper. She is a candidate for her Doctor of Creative Arts at the Writing & Society Research Centre, University of Western Sydney.