Tender Morsels print reviews

Not sure if I mentioned this one, Stuart Dunstan in Bookseller and Publisher way back in August. I got it in my Melbourne Festival goody-bag, and he gave such a neat plot summary of the book that I used it on my panels. He also said the book

has definitely been worth the wait [music to my ears—that was some wait] ... dense with issues of gender, psychology, and society, that makes this a very satisfying read.

Frances Atkinson in the Age at the end of October:

Small stories bump into bigger issues as Lanagan teases part themes about gender, masculinity, love and brutality. I went willingly, while those unfamiliar might need a little more time to warm to the murky depths of her prose.

Murky? Never. My prose is no more 'murky' than it is 'clotted'.

Katherine England, in the Adelaide Advertiser confesses:

As with many of her fans I have waited impatiently through three marvellous collections of short stories for Lanagan to return to the novel. Now ... in spite of the sustained imaginative power and originality of Tender Morsels I find myself paradoxically missing the maturity, the compression, the open-endedness and, particularly, the rich and unpredictable variety those short stories.

That's not paradoxical, Katherine; that's just goldarned perverse. :)

The Maitland Mercury reproduces the back-cover blurb beneath the heading 'Successful Novocastrian'. This despite my only having been born in Newcastle, never lived there, and having left the area, ooh, nigh on forty years ago.

Lisa Nolan in the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun, end of October: 'A wonderful and thought-provoking story examining the human condition, set in a world where anything is possible.'

Magpies reviewed it in November—Lyn Linning recommends it to young adults: 'I have found this moving, philosophical novel shelved only with adult fiction ... Tender Morsels offers rare and precious gifts to maturing, thoughtful young readers. Firstly, Margo Lanagan validates the intensity and power of adolescent girls' feelings, something many adults ahve forgotten ... Secondly, the story shows that, whatever the difficulties of adolescence, adulthood is attainable.'

I've already linked to Lili Wilkinson's review, but I meant to go back and quote you this nice bit about the short stories, which tickled me, and which is reproduced in her review in the Centre for Youth Literature's newsletter:

... an amazing experience. But it takes work. Each of her stories is like running across sizzling tarmac and then plunging into a deep pool of clear, cold water. It's an enormous yet wonderful shock to the system, but by the time you've acclimatised you have to haul yourself out and start all over again.

Time for another nap now, I think. Oh, you're asleep already? Oh.

**signs out, tiptoes away**