Like a House on Fire

From prize-winning short-story writer Cate Kennedy comes a new collection to rival her highly acclaimed Dark Roots. In Like a House on Fire, Kennedy once again takes ordinary lives and dissects their ironies, injustices and pleasures with her humane eye and wry sense of humour. In 'Laminex and Mirrors', a young woman working as a cleaner in a hospital helps an elderly patient defy doctor's orders. In 'Cross-Country', a jilted lover manages to misinterpret her ex's new life. And in 'Ashes', a son accompanies his mother on a journey to scatter his father's remains, while lifelong resentments simmer in the background. Cate Kennedy's poignant short stories find the beauty and tragedy in illness and mortality, life and love.

Winner of Steele Rudd Award, Queensland Literary Awards 2013 (Australia)
Short-listed for Stella Prize 2013 (Australia)
Short-listed for Nita B. Kibble Award 2013 (Australia)
Long-listed for ALS Gold Medal 2013 (Australia)

“'This is a heartfelt and moving collection of short stories that cuts right to the emotional centre of everyday life.'”

'Cate Kennedy is a singular artist who looks to the ordinary in a small rural community and is particularly astute on exploring the fallout left by the aftermath of the personal disasters that change everything.' -- Eileen Battersby Irish Times 'Cate Kennedy writes with the warm understanding and cold precision of a master.' -- David Malouf 'One of the world's finest short-story writers'. -- Robert Drewe 'Cate Kennedy's anger is a cleansing fire. Her stories ache with small mercies - tender, life-affirming, real.' -- Hilary McPhee 'Short fiction at its best.' Instyle Magazine Bookseller & Publisher 'Cate Kennedy is among the very best of short story writers ... bewitching.' Ballarat Courier

Cate Kennedy is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won the People's Choice Award in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards in 2010. She is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has been published widely. Her first collection, Dark Roots, was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards and for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. She is also the author of a travel memoir, Sing, and Don't Cry, and the poetry collections Joyflight, Signs of Other Fires and The Taste of River Water, which won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry in 2011. She lives on a secluded bend of the Broken River in north-east Victoria.

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