Pushing back / John Kinsella.

Having kittens -- Night train - Patras to Athens-- The watch -- Little red car -- Green light -- Quid pro quo -- No more tangles -- Goozi -- Barrows -- Backstroke -- The purchase -- Touch -- Echolocation -- Lightening memory -- Surrounded -- A taste of blood -- Stretching -- A viewing -- The eagle over the funeral in the shearing shed -- On the rocks -- The kayaker on the lough (and a proverb) -- Magic child -- Globe -- Ging-- Pushing back -- Roaming the campsite -- Home invasion -- Portrait under duress -- Carpet-cleaner -- Electioneering -- I'm a little tea-pot -- The cupboard -- Manning the barricades -- Monkey bars -- Here be lions.

Pushing Back is John Kinsella's most haunting and timely fiction to date. It is populated with eccentric, compelling characters, drifters, unlikely friendships, the silences of dissolving relationships, haunted dwellings and lonely highways, the ghosts of cleared bushland and the threats of right-wing nationalists and senseless destruction. Yet throughout this assured distillation of contemporary Australian life, empathy rises like the red- tailed black cockatoos that appear and reappear, nature coalescing with the human spirit, the animals, the trees, the land, the people pushing back. These stories are at once disturbing, tender and hopeful.