Excitable girls rush out to meet life; what could go wrong? A masterful debut about the terrifying thrills of innocence from a voice of experience.
Teenagers sneak out to the creek for a wild New Year's Eve party. A sleep-deprived woman who imagines she is pregnant to a Viking faces her scathing sixteen-year-old self. A woman in love wakes up in a van Gogh painting.
These gem-like stories are about the desire to rush out and meet life; about getting in over your head; about danger, and damage, and what it means to survive – and not always survive – the risk of being young. They chart the borderlands between girls and women, daughters and mothers, freedom and fear.
Emerging fully-formed and singing songs of both innocence and experience, Anne Casey-Hardy is the rarest of new voices: at the same time reckless and entirely in control; funny and frightening; wise and full-blooded.
Praise for Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls
‘I find myself haunted by this innocent, menacing, blackly funny and fabulous book. Anne Casey-Hardy’s writing hums with a dangerous, coiled energy in sly, ghostly stories of girls and women striking back, lying low, busting out, triumphing even while sinking. Casey-Hardy is a raw, rare talent with an unforgettable voice.’ Charlotte Wood, author of The Weekend and The Natural Way of Things
'Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls buzzes with energy. Anne Casey-Hardy is a wonderful fiction writer. Her characters are brave and full of soul. In mapping the lives and the places where stories thrive, Casey-Hardy also touches our hearts. Such a gift.' Tony Birch, author of Dark as Last Night and The White Girl
‘Electric, irreverent, haunting, heart-breaking – one of the best short story collections you'll ever read. An exceptional debut from a hugely talented writer.’ Wayne Marshall, author of Shirl
‘You’ll be transfixed by the misadventures of Casey-Hardy's dangerously innocent heroines. Her fractured fairy tales are like nothing you’ve come across before: unnerving, brilliant, hilarious, heart-stirring.’ Lucinda Holdforth, author of Leading Lines
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‘I love these stories, and Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls will take centre stage on my bookshelf. They’re deep and dark, but also uproariously funny, and never anything but hopeful. Each girl or woman in these stories faces the reader and tells the truth, and I can’t ask for more than that. Cross the precision and absurdity of George Saunders with the searching intelligence of Angela Carter, and add the technical brilliance of Alice Munro, and you might have some idea of what Anne can do, but in fact her writing is wholly her own, and wholly original. Australian literature will be very much richer for her Cautionary Tales!
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Tegan Bennett Daylight, author of The Details and Six Bedrooms