SJ Finn

Joan Mercer’s Fertile Head

This week on The ABR Podcast we feature a short story from the ABR archive. The story, ‘Joan Mercer’s Fertile Head’ by S.J. Finn, was commended in the 2018 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story prize. (The 2025 ABR Jolley Short Story Prize is now open!) S.J. Finn is an Australian writer based in Melbourne. Listen to ‘Joan Mercer’s Fertile Head’, first published in ABR in 2018 and now part of ABR’s extensive digital archive going back to 1978.

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'Joan Mercer's Fertile Head', a new story by S.J. Finn

by SJ Finn •

ABR Fiction

When the urge unearthed itself, Joan Mercer was at the sink washing dishes, her husband’s egg cup and her children’s cereal bowls. She flicked the soapsuds from her hands and crossed the kitchen, going out through the sliding doors and onto the wooden deck. There, she contemplated the garden. In the corner of the backyard, jonquils were blooming. But it wasn’t these that drew her over the lawn. It was the jacaranda tree. It was calling to her. ... (read more)

Down to the River by S.J. Finn

by Luke Johnson •

May 2015, no. 371

Luke Johnson reviews 'Down to the River' by S.J. Finn

If it were up to Roy Ellis, the town-proud editor-in-chief of Dungower’s only newspaper, ‘paedophilia would be systematically bred out of humans’. That just about sums up the attitudes of his readers, who are disgusted to learn that there is a convicted child sex offender living among them in rural Victoria. Only when Ellis’s maverick reporter Joni Miller re ...

This Too Shall Pass by S.J. Finn

by Anthony Lynch •

March 2011, no. 329

From Kafka on, we can trace a line of narratives dealing with alienation in the modern workplace, with forces seen and unseen overwhelming individual volition. S.J. Finn’s first novel makes a humorous contribution to this tradition.

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