Like a House on Fire

Cate Kennedy

'Cate Kennedy's anger is a cleansing fire. Her stories ache with small mercies — tender, life-affirming, real.'

Hilary McPhee

'Cate Kennedy writes with the warm understanding and cold precision of a master.'

David Malouf

View all reviews

'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

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.

'Cate Kennedy's anger is a cleansing fire. Her stories ache with small mercies — tender, life-affirming, real.'

Hilary McPhee

'Cate Kennedy writes with the warm understanding and cold precision of a master.'

David Malouf

View all reviews

BUY EBOOK

Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 210mm × 135mm

Extent:288pp

ISBN (13):9781922070067

RRP:$29.99

Pub date:26 Sep 2012

Rights Held: World

Rights Sold: Audio (Audible)

High-res cover:Download Image

AWARDS

2013 ALS Gold Medal - Long-listed 2013 Kibble Award - Short-listed 2013 Steele Rudd Award, Queensland Literary Awards - Winner 2013 Stella Prize - Short-listed

CATEGORIES / tags

AUTHOR

Cate Kennedy

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.

Dark Roots

Cate Kennedy

RRP: $24.99 Pub date: 26 Sep 2012 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

The Taste of River Water

Cate Kennedy

RRP: $24.99 Pub date: 2 May 2011 Category: Poetry Cover view

Quick view

The World Beneath

Cate Kennedy

RRP: $32.99 Pub date: 2 Aug 2010 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

I Leave It Up to You

Jinwoo Chong

RRP: $35.00 Pub date: 1 Apr 2025 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Colony

Annika Norlin

RRP: $32.99 Pub date: 4 Mar 2025 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Time Together

Luke Horton

RRP: $34.99 Pub date: 4 Mar 2025 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Fire Exit

Morgan Talty

RRP: $32.99 Pub date: 4 Feb 2025 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

The Knowing

Madeleine Ryan

RRP: $29.99 Pub date: 4 Feb 2025 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Darkenbloom

Eva Menasse

RRP: $36.99 Pub date: 7 Jan 2025 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

The Liquid Eye of a Moon

Uchenna Awoke

RRP: $39.99 Pub date: 7 Jan 2025 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Thirst

Marina Yuszczuk

RRP: $29.99 Pub date: 29 Oct 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Gifted

Suzumi Suzuki

RRP: $27.99 Pub date: 1 Oct 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Diving, Falling

Kylie Mirmohamadi

RRP: $32.99 Pub date: 3 Sep 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Bear

Julia Phillips

RRP: $29.99 Pub date: 2 Jul 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Brothers and Ghosts

Khuê Ph?m

RRP: $29.99 Pub date: 2 Jul 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

The Good Women of Fudi

Liu Hong

RRP: $29.99 Pub date: 2 Jul 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Manny and the Baby

Varaidzo

RRP: $35.00 Pub date: 4 Jun 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

The Hairdresser’s Son

Gerbrand Bakker

RRP: $35.00 Pub date: 4 Jun 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Antiquity

Hanna Johansson

RRP: $27.99 Pub date: 30 Apr 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Thunderhead

Miranda Darling

RRP: $29.99 Pub date: 3 Apr 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

Quick view

Vladivostok Circus

Elisa Shua Dusapin

RRP: $27.99 Pub date: 3 Apr 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view