The Piano Girls

Description

Three musical sisters honour their mother with a piano recital every year in her memory. They compete with one another, practising in secret to see who can be the best. In other stories, music, food, and restaurants are themes. A woman fends off a seducer by cooking up a storm; there is a cat called Min; an elderly woman is the pet of a group of young men; an agonising breakup takes place in a luxury hotel, and a young woman is obsessed with her breasts. These are funny, tender, sharply observed stories written in a style that is engaging, humorous, and invariably compassionate.

Elizabeth Smither has published six collections of short stories, six novels, eighteen collections of poetry, as well as journals and memoirs. She was poet laureate (2001-03) and was awarded an Hon.D Litt by Auckland University in 2004 and the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry in 2008. Her latest poetry collection, Night Horse, won the Ockham NZ Book Award for poetry in 2018.

"The first thing about her short stories is that they immediately take you into their closely observed world of good, decent New Zealanders going about their emotional lives in chaos. The second thing is their wit. Everything she writes is an instant delight." Steve Braunias; "I read Elizabeth Smither because she writes about wonderfully smart and complex women, offering sensitive insight into their domestic lives and relationships." Louise O'Brien on Elizabeth Smither, Acadamy of New Zealand Literature