Product Description
A wayward, wanton selection of stories grounded in displacement, desire, and the wish coursing through us to accede to the state of love. There is torment and illness, crude reality and distant fragrant places, peopled by characters that reside close to our bones, our psyches, our flesh. A Japanese soprano has lost her voice and seeks repose on a sailing boat in Corsica. A South African advertising executive learns the ropes at his Accra office. Destructive lovers interview a renowned musician in dusty Bamako. Lovers meet, fade, delude. We are weak and defiant beings, ever-learning, ever-lustful.
Fine stories, rank with exotic air, bursting like old fruit.
Bruce Pascoe
McNamara’s work has a fierce, vital beat, her stories robust yet finely worked, her voice striking in its confidence and originality. She writes with sensuous precision and a craft that is equally precise. This is fiction that can stand up in any company.’
Hilary Mantel
REVIEWS
“The Carnal Fugues is a globetrotting anthology of short fiction, a collection of greatest hits from Catherine McNamara that sketches shadow-lines of desire and connection on an international canvas… McNamara’s prose is often fierce and finely wrought; her emotional intelligence and cultural curiosity are matched by a lively, experimental approach (some of these offerings verge on microfiction) to the short form.” CAMERON WOODHEAD AND STEVE CARROLL, The Sydney Morning Herald
