The Difference To Me Garry Disher 1998

Dustjacket synopsis:
"An uneasy geologist in the South African interior holds a hand gun at his side; a young Australian woman visiting a friend in Italy has to come to terms with the expatriate community; well-meaning tourists in Mozembique encounter a man wielding a machete ...

"Delicate, compassionate, darkly humorous, each of Garry Disher's award-winning stories in The Difference to Me highlights a change either in the characters or in their circumstances so that now they must relate differently to the people closest to them. And all the stories isolate their moments of deception, of personal loss or of misdirected love."

Quotes:
"Disher is a writer of very considerable talent. This can well be seen in his short stories." - John Hanrahan, The Age
"Disher is at his hawk-eyed best when hovering just above exotic details" - James Wood, The Times Literary Supplement

Contents
Tap
The Difference to Me
Now When it Rains
Amateur Hour
Gently, Gently, Sideways
Stinkadora
Blessed
Restoration
Rudi
Chain
The Boundary Man
Another Word for It
Poor Reception
Dead Eye
Something to Show for My Miserable Life

First Paragraph from the Title Story

Unrequited love drove the young man away from his old haunts to a room in a house in one of those unexpected streets along the bank of the river that divides the city. He gave his address to a few friends. They raised their eyebrows. That was no help to him, in his present state, and so he found himself pointing out that there was a wonderful park just five minutes walk away.

There was the freeway, but after a while he was able to claim that the noise didn't bother him. There was also a brewery a few streets away. It had a chimney that was high, but not high enough, and the smell lingered. He could see the top of the chimney if he stood near the fence, choked with blackberries, that ran along the top of the steep bank of the river at the back of the house. The other people in the house told him to watch where he walked because snakes sometimes came up from the river, into the garden.

In the old streets there were little factories that made chip-board bookcases, boots and shoes, and racks and racks of cheap dresses. He caught the bus to university on a main road upon which buses and trucks and cars crawled every hour of the day. People hated taking this route but they had no choice. There were.too many traffic lights, and they crawled along. The air was offensive. Everything gave the young man a headache.

From the Sirius paperback edition, 1988.

This page and its contents are copyright © 2001 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: November 16, 2001.