Fiction

The Break by Deb Fitzpatrick

Item: The Break
Author: Gretchen Shirm

by Gretchen Shirm •

November 2014, no. 366

Fremantle Press, $24.99 pb, 227 pp

Fiction

The Break by Deb Fitzpatrick

by Gretchen Shirm •

November 2014, no. 366

The Break centres on the story of two families. Rosie quits her job as a journalist in Perth and moves, with her boyfriend, to the Margaret River, where they try to escape the monotony of their city existence. Ferg lives on a fruit orchard with his wife, his son, and his widowed mother. With the arrival of Ferg’s estranged brother Mike, relationships are straining. The characters in The Break struggle to balance the reality of living responsible, productive existences with finding fulfilment in their lives.

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.