Synopses & Reviews
In these powerful stories the verandah people are Jonathan Bennetts own compatriots: Australians for whom the ever-present verandah is both stage and shelter, a retreat from a hostile bushland or city street and a seductive barrier to participation in the wider world.
Bennett offers us extraordinary portraits of his characters, many of them dreamers and searchers. Also beautifully rendered is the disquieting, sometimes overwhelming, landscape; Bennett makes us feel the relentless heat of a cloudless day, smell overripe bush, witness the spectacle of a sudden coastal storm. While many of the characters are loosely connected to one another across stories, a subtle sense of loss pervades Verandah People. We feel compassion for Bennetts complex community of Australians, even as they watch the world slip by, longing, from the safety of their verandahs.
Review
Bennett is a real find
master of the short fiction form. January Magazine
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Bennetts tremendous talent shines in passages brimming with sensuality. [These stories] evoke the continents harsh and exhilarating environment with striking images that transcend mere physical description. Quill and Quire
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In this skillfully interwoven set of 12 short stories...Bennett's characters, who make their brief, but intense appearances across the various verandahs, are detailed with a compassionate eye, then are compelled to move, inexorably, each to her or his own personal precipice. Bennett denies his characters shelter, indeed, turns them inside out in savage imagery. He pursues his theme ruthlessly... Ordinary, everyday situations gather with the abruptness of storm clouds in the Australian coastal sky, to climax in terror, separation, loss. The Globe and Mail
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Bennett exhales the very breath of Australia in this new collection of short fiction. In these probing, subtle but powerful pieces, Down Under is less a geographical place than a state of mind, a psychic universe with its own set of quirky laws. Edmonton Journal
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Bennett builds his narratives from the nerves up... he has a naturalist style, punctuated with flashes of lyricism and compelling imagery, and a demonstrated gift for characterization, for revealing personality through an accumulation of detail and action. Toronto Star
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The stories are valuable for, like a lot of good art, suggesting more than is literally said. In creating these characters and their struggles with change, hope and regret, Bennett captures something important and meaningful in an outstanding and memorable collection of stories. Danforth Review
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"Like a lyrebird, Bennett replicates his hometown, capturing the language, the character, the climate, and the culture with an insider's intimacy. Australia is indivisible from these stories, much like the south of the United States in Flannery O'Connor's stories, or the city and suburbs of Prague from Milan Kundera's work. To read the talented Bennett's work is to breathe in the eucalypts, hear the magpies warble, and occasionally flinch at a kind of rough justice." Georgie Lewis, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)