I couldn't find her A Well Dressed Explorer in the library, so borrowed Dryalnds meanwhile. It is a book addressed to the world's last reader. That it is about books and reading pretty much got me.
It is set in a small town in inland Australia, and the fictional writer who has been living there for a while, still, in a way, doesn't feel she belongs there, or wishes to belong there but finds herself an outsider. It weaves together her story, and her attempt at writing in this world which does not read, just watches, with the story of the town and a few of its people. Her sketches of the people sketch the town for us. And is written in a quite fast flowing un-put-downable language. I read the book in a couple of days. Generally I take much longer with books.
Keen to read more from her. One of the few books in my recent or current reads which is of these times. Although it talks about the modern world and its complexities of human relationships, it still has in its stories something fundamental about story telling. It deals with the universal emotions and not just the temporal of that particular time or place. There is 'bleakness' as the introducer says, perhaps a lot of it, but there's so much warm humanity rippling through it. It is quite warm in certain ways, in its humanity and the language is full of life. I guess life is warm. And the book beats with it.
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