Winner JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021, Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
'Atmospheric and refined, Bug Week is compelling from start to finish. A tightly wound collection of short stories which explore the weird, the eerie and the mordantly funny, there’s a sense of quiet unease and slow-burning rage. A talking albatross at an open mic night, an envious sibling, a desperate ex-lover and a melancholy brothel owner are some of the characters encountered in this collection, which delves into the female experience, anger, male entitlement and restless malaise.'
A science educator in domestic chaos fetishises Scandinavian furniture and champagne flutes. A group of white-collar deadbeats attend a swinger’s party in the era of drunk Muldoon. A pervasive smell seeps through the walls of a German housing block. A seabird performs at an open-mic night.
Bug Week is a scalpel-clean examination of male entitlement, a dissection of death, an agar plate of mundanity. From 1960s Wellington to post-Communist Germany, Bug Week traverses the weird, the wry and the grotesque in a story collection of human taxonomy.
Paperback
184 pages
H: 210mm W: 138mm