
- 256 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls
About this book
Longlisted for the 2023 Indie Book Awards. 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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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- 1. Being the Mother
- 2. Literally Beside Myself
- 3. New Year’s Eve
- 4. The Starry Night
- 5. Birds
- 6. Starving in the Land of Plenty
- 7. A Red-Tinged Darkness
- 8. When Bees Become Diamonds
- 9. Lucy
- 10. Família Sangre
- 11. What I’d Do if I Was in Charge
- 12. My Beautiful Dollhouse
- 13. I’ve Been Waiting So Long
- 14. In Disguise, Lying Low
- 15. The Wailey Willow
- 16. Don’t Blink
- 17. The Merri Creek
- 18. Cape Conran
- Notes on These Stories
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Copyright