‘With its high-rise skyline under a big sky, Surfers Paradise has been called a ‘pleasure dome’ by Frank Moorhouse. But Atomic City (published in 2013), set largely in the lofty apartment buildings and businesses that abut, and look out on, the beach, captures perfectly the grift and graft of this place.’
— Liz Ellison, The Guardian
6pm Saturday Night
Overland
“We decide to put mum in the over 50s club on RSVP because it’s been too long, too long trying not to show you’re not really lonely. I keep saying, ‘He looks alright’ and when we have to fill in the box named my ideal man mum says with a bit more lean in her chair, ‘I only want to bring someone home you’ll be proud of’. Her comment and all the old men selfies make me sad. They look to me like someone I could love. As a new dad. As a long gone. And mum says, ‘No too fat.’”
We have to steal everything to feel it.
— Atomic City
Sunny Lodge
Griffith Review
“In a way Michael was sympathetic. Mrs Warner lived off the smell of an oily rag and she did it alone but the difference was something cultural, like the washing hanging off every available surface on the veranda instead of pegged in an orderly fashion on the Hills, like walking everywhere and chatting on the street at all hours of the night; it was people living differently. Mrs Warner didn't understand. The boys weren't making homes. They were driving night shifts down the long roads it took to find a better life.”
Raining Price
Overland
