Ioana Petrescu

All houses have a distinct smell. Except for yours. There is nothing distinctive about the smell of your own house. I don’t have a house, let alone one built from words; I have what equates to roughly one-and-a-half rooms. Still, I often ask my friends, ‘What does my place smell like? Pungent?’ They are always honest, and I love them for it. I can then endeavour to remove whatever it is that’s causing that smell. So Rosemary asked me recently to, and I paraphrase to the tune of my own metaphor, Take this book and write about how it smells. First I will state: walking into Nanna’s house invariably makes me feel dizzy; others might feel nauseous upon entering a sharehouse of twenty-somethings. It’s a matter of taste. I don’t like mothballs, maybe others don’t like stale beer and sweat-dried socks.

Frankly, I’m a cynical bastard, and I expected these stories to be a lot worse than they are. These authors are students of the course mentioned in the subtitle, and some of the pieces are their first published works. They are still learning to write, as are most of we. Furthermore, the submission call would not have reached further than the UniSA students. That’s a problem. However, I knew that when I picked up the book, and that’s why I mention it now; these stories need to be read in the above context. Basically, give them a break. I cannot lie to you: some of them are terribly underdeveloped and others are poorly written. But some shined through and saved the day for me. I will not name names; that would be mean.

Overall, the book was satisfying, but the few strong pieces propped up the many weak ones.

This review was originally published in the July–August 2005 the word ... , the newsletter of the Society of Editors (SA).… (mehr)