Estelle Tang
Cass Lehman keeps to herself – her mother and grandmother tell other residents of sleepy Jewel Bay that she is agoraphobic. Her real reason for staying in her house for the past nine years is that she has a terrifying kind of ‘retrocognition’: if Cass passes over a place where someone has died, she experiences their death. And death, as it turns out, is everywhere: on the street, at newly renovated pharmacies, and in teenagers’ trysting spots. The daughter and granddaughter of women who also have paranormal gifts, Cass has long believed she, and others, will be safer if she remains a recluse. But now, ‘on the wrong side of twenty-five’, she wants to experience more of life.
... (read more)
Louisa and Harry are both haunted. Louisa’s ghost is Tom, a son who took his own life. Harry’s spectres are no less troubling for still being alive; a failed marriage and unknown daughter pluck at his mind, are ‘imprinted on him’. These baby boomers, portrayed in alternating third-person chapters, are poorly matched against contemporary societal challe ...
Estelle Tang reviews 'The Source of the Sound' by Patrick Holland
The final offering in Patrick Holland’s first collection of short stories is also its best.
... (read more)
The title of Sarah Hopkins’s second novel, Speak to Me, is an exhortation: bridge the gap between us. It is also an expression of hope, however misguided, that such a gap can be bridged: if only we could speak, we could heal.
... (read more)