Reaching across continents, these allusive, richly textured stories are unified by moments of dislocation in which certainties are eclipsed by unfamiliar terrain. A last, tranforming embrance between Indian lvoers heralds their separate journeys into arranged marriages; an elderly woman discovers a kinship with her neighbour through their mutual isolation; a you woman's beauty is ravaged by fire; a schoolteacher, fettered by responisbility, learns from her brash students during a Queensland summer heady with the smell of sugar cane; a decaying amaryllis plant mirrors the pain of the artist who obsessively sketches it, and a woman devastated by her friend's death, is shocked by her own secret exultation in living. The internationally acclaimed Janette Turner Hospital recieved the Fellowship of Australian Writers Fiction Award for this vibrant collection of stories, illuminating epiphanies both gentle and coruscating.