GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING
- The stories in the collection can all be assumed to take place within Australia, either in rural or urban settings
- Some take place indoors (mostly in homes or offices) with little or no reference to the broader geographical environment.
- Consider how Kennedy communicates the settings, given that the stories rarely mention any landmarks or place names, and most seem not to be set in specific or 'real' Australian places.
- Kennedy creates a sense of place in a number of ways, including:
- descriptions of landscapes or urban features (in 'Flexion' - "Frank's wife notices the dust floating like a heat mirage as she drives up the track..."; "As she runs she kicks off her slippery town shoes and feels dry furrowed earth rising and falling and crumbling under her bare feet...")
- accounts of characters' homes (in 'Whirlpool' - "Your mother spends the hot summer days inside, watching the tennis on TV, occasionally raising her frosted glass of iced coffee delicately to her temple."; "Back inside the house, it's dim and airless, thick with the piney, December smell o the Christmas tree in the lounge room.")
- transitions and journeys within the stories (as in 'Ashes', in which the characters travel to a lake some distance from their home city - "Chris is looking for the turn-off. He thinks he'll know it when he sees it, although he hasn't been up here for twenty-five years").
HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL SETTING
- Kennedy's writing is contemporary, set in a social and geographical context that is familiar to many Australian readers
- We would describe the content, settings, characters and ideas as 'contemporary', in the sense that they are not from another era, location, culture or reality.
- You will probably notice small details within many of the stories that 'date' the writing, even within only a few years of its 2012 publication. For example, at the climax of 'Whirlpool', the photographer is using a film camera, and Anna imagines the recipients holding physical prints rather than viewing the photos on a computer or phone as we might expect to do now
- Consider the extent to which even a relatively short time elapsing between composition and reading can affect your interpretation.
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