I'm not normally a big fan of short stories, but Georgia Blain has really done a great job with these explorations of relationships between men, women and children. Nearly all of the stories seemed to me to have an Australian-ness about them, although I'd be hard pressed to point to specific features that produce that feeling...I suppose it's the familiarity of the urban and bush environments that she describes. Not all the characters were appealing to me but nonetheless I did enjoy reading about them. I found Blain's portrayal of difficult and failed relationships to be particularly insightful. I would have liked to have explored some of these situations in longer form. I'm sad that no more works are being added to the Georgia Blain catalog. Death comes unfairly early for too many people and I don't know how to understand that. Maybe I will see what Blain's end of life memoir, The Museum of Words, has to say. ( )