Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%
×

Warning

JUser: :_load: Unable to load user with ID: 4226
JUser: :_load: Unable to load user with ID: 4019
ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize

'The Art of Life' by Faith Oxenbridge

Jolley Prize 2014 (Shortlist)
by •
September 2014, no. 364
ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize

'The Art of Life' by Faith Oxenbridge

Jolley Prize 2014 (Shortlist)
by •
September 2014, no. 364

Inherit your great-grandmother’s wild red hair and hear the boys sing Griffin’s Gingernuts are so spicy when you walk past the Four Square court. Feel like a freak. Ask your mother if you can cut your hair short when you start high school and hear her say but it’s your best asset. Worry about your assets. Regret not cutting it on the first day of school when your form teacher christens you Orphan Annie and everyone laughs. Eat your vegemite sandwiches alone at one end of a wobbly bench outside the gym and ignore the fat girl wobbling it at the other end. Howl into the headwind as you bike home from school. Hate your mother when you arrive red-eyed, wind-whipped and she sighs. Wish you were Orphan Annie.

Leave a comment
Faith Oxenbridge

Faith Oxenbridge is a Creative Writing and Journalism teacher from Christchurch, New Zealand, who writes fiction in her spare time. She started writing when her children were older and she owned a bookshop, but realised she wasn’t cut out for retail; instead of smiling at her customers she found herself turning them into characters. She went back to University and completed a MFA in Creative Writing. Her stories have been published in the NZ Listener, the Six Pack 2, Best NZ Fiction 2006, Turbine, the Sunday Star Times and Christchurch Press. She was runner-up in the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Competition 2012, a finalist in the Victoria University Overland Competition in 2013, and won the (NZ) Sunday Star Times Competition in 2013 with her story, What you Have. She is currently compiling her stories into a collection for publication and is writing a novel. (photo courtesy of Fairfax)

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Comments (9)

  • It took me a while to get into the writing style. But stick with it and you'll come to love it. Very good story, brilliant ending sentence.
    Posted by Bevan
    20 February 2016
  • Goosebump buffet or rather goosebump seven courses meal.
    Posted by Maxwell Chong
    21 July 2015
  • Wonderful. I found the style grating at first and was tempted to stop, but am so glad I didn't. I grew to love it. The most memorable story I've read for quite a while. It will stay with me and I will read it again.
    Posted by Calypso
    05 July 2015
  • The style matches the content. Everything a verb, a doing, an action, in spite of life being out of control. Finally losing control, is where the inner command monologue ends, so the ending works perfectly. Impressed.
    Posted by Soren
    30 April 2015
  • This is just gorgeous. So true, so real. Every woman is in this story at some point. Thank you.
    Posted by Naomi
    17 April 2015
  • Innovative and well-crafted, but overall it's a little too smug and showy -- even glib -- for my taste. The style grated after a while. It's not really as poignant as it pretends. Amid the sardonic humor, I feel I lost the person along the way -- or maybe never really got to know her.
    Posted by Steven J. Lowery
    27 February 2015
  • This was one of the most beautiful, truthful, realistic stories ever. Different -but nice- style of writing.
    Posted by Keturah Cutting
    07 February 2015
  • best story i have ever read- and I have read enough for my eyes to collapse and die like melbourne cup favourite- should have won by country mile, a furlong, a couple of pixels.
    Posted by Michael Heffernan
    05 November 2014
  • Such beautiful, poignant waste and wreckage and unfairness. An excellent story with a worthy ending.
    Posted by Glen Hunting
    01 September 2014

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.