Cosmo Cosmolino

Description

"He straightened his spine, raised his head, and extended his gun arm towards me in a slow, vertical arc. I saw then what he was, and stood still in front of him, for he was here on business. He was a small, serious, stone-eyed angel of mercy." Janet is a skeptic, a journalist; Maxine revels in New Age fantasies; and Ray, a drifter, is a born-again Christian. The common ground is the house they share. But their fragile domestic balance is about to explode amid the smashing of ukeleles, the unexpected ascension of an angel, and a sudden shower of jonquils.

Helen Garner's first novel, Monkey Grip, came out in 1977. Since then she has published novels, short stories, essays, and feature journalism. In 1995 she published The First Stone, a controversial account of a Melbourne University sexual harassment case. Joe Cinque's Consolation (2004) was a non-fiction study of two murder trials in Canberra. Her most recent novel, The Spare Room (2008), has been translated into many languages.

'In person, as on the page, Garner does not dominate or take centre stage; she doesn't boss or harass or hector. She is never still, never fixed, dealing in no absolutes except for the power of the eye to see, and the power of the pen to record. This restlessness, this energy, brings her hurtling off the page towards the reader.' Tegan Bennett Daylight, Sydney Review of Books