Shadowboxing

“A Fitzroy childhood comes to life in Melbourne writer Tony Birch’s impressive debut.” – Who magazine“Stunning series of linked stories about growing up in ‘60s Fitzroy.” – Jason Steger, the Age“There’s a Hemingwayesque minimalism about this writing, but in Hemingway the pathos was reined in more. In the 10 linked stories in Shadowboxing, the pathos is often barely contained and the effect is quite shattering… . Birch’s descriptions of the lower socio-economic world of inner Melbourne in the ‘60s are brilliant and he evokes, with a curious nostalgia, a claustrophobic world that anyone would be lucky to escape from unscathed. He has a great ability to pare down his prose, laying bare the raw flesh of the matter in the process. Despite their rigours, the stories are engaging, with flashes of larrikin humour. The book is even something of a page-turner at times, although the calamity of one page often leads only to heartbreak on the next.” – Phil Brown, the Australian“These are stories whose universal themes are brought to the fore by lucid prose that, in bearing unblinking witness to hardship, sows the seeds of poetry, if not grace.” – Steve Gome, Australian Book Review“Tony Birch’s debut Shadowboxing encapsulates what (Helen) Garner identifies as ‘the dangerous and exciting breakdown of the old boundaries between fiction and non-fiction’ … Shadowboxing also transcends the boundaries between the novel and the short-story collection.” – Ceridwen Spark, Sydney Morning Herald

Tony Birch is the author of the books Shadowboxing (2006), Father’s Day (2009), Blood (2011), shortlisted for the Miles Franklin literary award, The Promise (2014), and Ghost River (2015). Both his fiction and nonfiction has been published widely in literary magazines and anthologies, both in Australia and internationally. He is currently the inaugural Bruce McGuinness Research Fellow within the Moondani Balluk Centre at Victoria University.