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Good Weekend's Summer Reading: Short stories by big writers
Eight Australian novelists, funny, moving, all thought-provoking stories about an imaginary year.
llustration by Simon Letch.Credit:
Welcome to this, our third annual Summer Reading issue, in which we ask eight Australian novelists who’ve had a hit in the past 12 months to pen a piece about the year just gone. But what to say about a year like 2020, in which so many of us did so little – and spent so much of our psychic energy in survival mode? So we adapted the brief, telling the writers that if they preferred they could write about an imaginary year – which, after all, plays to their natural strengths as storytellers.
As you will see, they responded in a variety of ways – some funny, others moving, all thought-provoking. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did.
We’ve augmented their stories with reflections by Good Weekend staff writers on the places in Australia that hold special resonance for them, sparked by the (joyful) realisation that we’ll all be holidaying here this summer.
This being our last issue for 2020. Have a wonderful festive season and summer break – and we’ll see you again on January 23.
- Katrina Strickland, Good Weekend Editor
Craig Silvey: 'If writing leaves me hollowed out, it’s readers who fill me back up'
Attendees at literary festivals can be insightful, funny, respectful – then there are the rest.
"There is nothing that thrills me more than earning the honour of a reader’s time."Credit: Illustration by Simon Letch
Meg Mason: 'The only thing different that summer, me and him and us finding ways to be away from everyone'
When the guy from your after-school job agrees to spend New Year’s at your family beach house, sunburn, salty hair and pash rash are just the beginning.
"My cousin sat up, kicked her doona off, and said, even if I wasn’t planning to dump him, it was weird I’d been allowed to bring him in the first place."Credit: Illustration by Simon Letch
Pip Williams: ‘I wonder if absence is necessary. I wish there was another way’
How does a self-confessed helicopter parent give her young adult son some space? By flying the nest herself.
"But she didn’t teach him to make bread, and now she imagines his struggles with friendships and love and identity, and all the questions he might have asked if she were there."Credit: Illustration by Simon Letch
Nardi Simpson: ‘Country itself whispered our sovereignty into their bones’
After the Ullaroi mob sign a treaty to re-establish their sovereignty, four days of song and dance send them to the stars and back.
'When they departed and the dust trail from their motorcade settled, four days of song and dance were decreed.'Credit: Illustration by Simon Letch
Robbie Arnott: ‘The bushland was draped in a shroud of extraordinary design’
A storm-induced mega spiderweb prompted a thriving business. Nature had different ideas.
"Clear mountain water soaked into the loam, and this time my cameras caught the spiders creating their cottony exhibitions on the ancient, thirsty canvas of the forest."Credit: Illustration by Simon Letch
Vivian Pham: ‘Humans are parasites powerful enough to destroy the world. Yet some want to protect it'
What would a bedbug perched on the shoulders of David Attenborough have seen during its long travels?
"David seemed down, and understandably ashamed."Credit: Illustration by Simon Letch
Sofie Laguna: ‘These were the songs of my youth, now overlaid with grief’
The deaths of multiple musical heroes in 2020 prompts a meditation on the final journey we all take.
"Every month of 2020, it seemed, there were losses for country music. My musical heroes are getting old."Credit: Illustration by Simon Letch
Ronnie Scott: ‘This inappropriate and unavoidable feeling was not something we’d previously encountered’
At home, certain everyday objects begin to take on a life of their own. And he’s not the only one feeling it.
"It had been a while since we’d shared this kind of project, and it was fun to do this with you: touching, thinking, sorting."Credit: Illustration by Simon Letch
To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.