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    Friends and Dark Shapes: A Novel
    Friends and Dark Shapes: A Novel
    Friends and Dark Shapes: A Novel
    Ebook226 pages3 hours

    Friends and Dark Shapes: A Novel

    By Kavita Bedford

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    “Bedford beautifully portrays the life of an Australian Indian writer struggling with grief a year after the death of her father.” —Publishers Weekly

    Sydney’s inner city is very much its own place, yet also a stand in for gentrifying inner-city suburbs the world over. Here, four young housemates struggle to untangle their complicated relationships while a poignant story of loss, grieving, and recovery unfolds.

    The nameless narrator of this story has recently lost her father and now her existence is split in two: she conjures the past in which he was alive and yet lives in the present, where he is not. To others, she appears to have it all together, but the grief she still feels creates an insurmountable barrier between herself and others, between the life she had and the one she leads.

    Wry, relatable, lyrical, and beautifully told, a book about politics, desire, youth, relationships and friends, Friends and Dark Shapes introduces a bold new Australian voice to American readers.

    Praise for Friends and Dark Shapes

    Shortlisted for the 2021 Queensland Literary Awards

    “An unflinching novel that captures the isolation and emotional overload of modern life.” —ForeWord Reviews

    “An intimate portrait of an individual in an ever-changing city and a searching meditation on the madness of grief . . . Bedford brilliantly maps the city and examines the narrator’s “dysfunctional relationship” with it. She also explores issues of race, identity and belonging through her heroine’s journalistic assignments and encounters with immigrants and refugees. However, the novel is at its most powerful when it centers upon a world caving in and the aftershocks: what it is like to “lose a parent and lose your base.”“—The Star Tribune
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 4, 2021
    ISBN9781609456658
    Friends and Dark Shapes: A Novel

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    Reviews for Friends and Dark Shapes

    4/5

    7 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Minimal plot, but is an interesting account of a young woman living in an inner-city sharehouse, coming to terms with the death of her father. She reflects on the world that she encounters to try to make sense of her life.
    • 5/5
      A fast read and great depiction of grief.

    Book preview

    Friends and Dark Shapes - Kavita Bedford

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