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A Second Life

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title A Second Life
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Stephen Wright
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:210
Dimensions(mm): Height 128,Width 198
Category/GenreModern and contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
ISBN/Barcode 9781925589047
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Brio Books
Imprint Xoum
Publication Date 1 September 2017
Publication Country Australia

Description

The birch is a quiet tree. It listens. In a tiny book-lined office backing onto a supermarket in a small town in northern New South Wales, a woman named Acker sits smoking a cigarette and listening to the music of Philip Glass. Others come to her with their stories of violence and pain and through her writing she attempts to salvage what they have lost. A Second Life immerses the reader in a world that is both familiar and forbidding. It unfolds with horror and beauty to reveal a complicated and unforgettable portrait of a woman who moves through this world carrying secret histories, different ways of seeing, and many stories. With a narrative voice that is at once eerily beautiful and slightly wild, and a premise that is surreal and ambitious, A Second Life stood out to me immediately. It's an exploration of the self and life and death, all of which comprise the psychological fabric of the main character, who occupies many selves and sometimes none at all.

Author Biography

Stephen Wright lives in Widjabul country. He has written extensively for Overland and his essays have won the Eureka Street Prize, the Nature Conservancy Prize, the Overland NUW Fair Australia Prize (twice) and the Scarlett Award and have been shortlisted for several others. Stephen works part-time as a manager of a NSW NGO delivering men's behaviour change programs, and also as a counsellor engaged in long-term psychotherapy with women and men who have experienced violence and abuse in childhood. His novella A Second Life won the 2017 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize.