Author(s): Jennifer Mills

Fiction

The award-winning stories in The Rest is Weight reflect Mills' years in Central Australia, as well as her travels to Mexico, Russia and China. The collection displays a confident diversity of narrative voices and a brevity in style. In The Wwind and Other Children, a girl searches for her lost grandmother while her parents quarrel at home; in Extra Time, a man contemplates inertia after toxic contamination changes life in a remote Australian town; a woman imagines a mother's love for her autistic son in The Air You Need; and in Hello, Satan, a boy awaits his destiny at a roundabout at midnight, on the edge of a small town. In exploring the human, Jennifer Mills deftly weaves themes of longing, alienation, delusion, resilience, and love. Sometimes dreamy and hypnotic, sometimes comic and wry, these stories leave their mark. Collected or on their own, Mills' fiction is both a joy and a wonder to read.