It’s Clifford and other stories

These fourteen short stories explore different facets of life in suburban and country Australia. They variously traverse the innocence of boyhood, the pangs of youth, and the petty disappointments and triumphs of adulthood and middle age.

There is subtle humour throughout the collection, from the whimsy of dogs giving cricketing advice in ‘Choke’, and a boy feeding up a spider in ‘The spider in the letterbox’, to a jaded postman getting his revenge in ‘Junk mail’.

Several stories feature the irony of events not going to plan. In the ‘The luck of the Irish’, evicting two uninvited house guests leads to unexpected trouble, and a visit from an ex-con. In ‘Four down, seven across’, a man’s belief that a new manager is out to get him interferes with his home life. An old friend poses a moral dilemma by revealing his new career in crime, in ‘The Colonel’; three friends attempt to rob a drug dealer without thinking things through, in ‘Room 11’ .

The focus is on the quiet joys of the bush in ‘Footprints’ and ‘Shelton’; the exhilaration of fandom in ‘Last of the Royboys’; youthful hopes and transgressions in ‘Going for gold’ and ‘Kirra’; and the cruel teasing of bullies in ‘Skin job’ and ‘It’s Clifford’.

Relationships are at the heart of each story: fathers and sons, footy mates and drinking buddies, work colleagues, partners in crime, neighbours, and man’s best friend. Characters and settings are firmly grounded in everyday reality, even when the stories depict imaginations at work.