We. Are. Family.

Description

Three brothers are forced to confront the quiet, pervasive violence of their family's past and the distances to which they have all carried their father's pain into their own futures. Paul Mitchell's episodic novel is an unraveling of the twisting threads that tie us to the past. We. Are. Family. explores the trauma handed down through generations as folklore and the way we all relate to those closest to us. The damaging idea of Australian masculinity is described with tenderness and dry humour. Taking cues from Tim Winton's The Turning, Paul Mitchell's We. Are. Family. is a cyclic meditation on the slow turning of life and the interconnectedness of identity and family. Reviewed in Good Reading magazine and the Sydney Morning Herald

Paul Mitchell's wry and moving considerations of society's undercurrents chronicle an unsettlingly recognisable Australia. His three poetry collections have received national prizes and wide acclaim, and his short story collection Dodging the Bull was included in the 2008 The Age Summer Read program. He is also a playwright, screenwriter and essayist.Mitchell's varied oeuvre explores the beauty in the seemingly mundane, the troubled history of Australian masculinity, and finds spirituality in the murky depths of life. He has continued this exploration with his sensitive and rugged first novel, We. Are. Family.