Story Without Compromise

“I don’t think I’ve read any fiction that marries the strengths of the short story and novel quite as adeptly, and without compromise, as Emily Perkins’ The Forrests,” Sydney Morning Herald journalist and author Malcolm Knox writes. “Perkins’ high reputation in her native New Zealand and in Britain should not be allowed to leap over Australia. It reminded me of one of my favourite books of the past year, Father of the Rain by Lily King, yet it achieved this family intimacy with a totally different box of tools. Between the short story and the novel, Perkins gets the best of both worlds. It is a daring experiment that comes off, as safe and assured, almost inevitable, as if this is the only way such a story could be written.”