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Plush embraces

by
July–August 2010, no. 323

Home Truth edited by Carmel Bird

Fourth Estate, $29.99 pb, 304 pp

Plush embraces

by
July–August 2010, no. 323

We are often far / From home in a dark town’ writes Charlie Smith in his poem ‘The Meaning of Birds’. Home Truth explores dark towns both literal and figurative. The pieces in any anthology are jigsaw-like, forming an overarching image. In this case, it is a sense of home as an entity most powerfully felt in exile; the place we look to from our darkest places. In her perceptive essay, Carmel Bird, scrutinising her immediate thoughts about home, finds in them much that looks like ‘a series of clichés and stereotypes’. Concepts of home, she suggests, may be ‘tinged with the glow of nostalgia, shadowed by poignant reminders of the ideal past’. If this is the face of the anthology’s jigsaw, it proves palimpsestic. Its deeper vision is the idea of resilience and of making a home from a position of exile.

Home Truth

Home Truth

edited by Carmel Bird

Fourth Estate, $29.99 pb, 304 pp

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