Australian stories ยท Book guide
This Taste for Silence by Amanda O'Callaghan: short stories of secrets and the unsaid
A marriage where the balance of power shifts. A taxi driver with a missing wife. An inherited painting with a troubling legacy. Amanda O'Callaghan's debut collection works at the edges of what people are willing to say.
The Listening ShelfUpdated 3 October 20262 min read
This page once held an earlier review by a different writer. This is a new page: a plain guide to the book, written from the book itself and its publisher's record, not a personal verdict.
The short answer
This Taste for Silence (University of Queensland Press, 2019) is Brisbane writer Amanda O'Callaghan's first book: a collection of short stories and flash fiction, several of them prize-winners, about secrets, erasures and the moments when something hidden almost comes out. For readers who like quiet, unsettling literary fiction in small doses.
What it is about
The publisher's description sets out the territory: the balance of power in a marriage shifts, with shocking consequences; an elderly woman recounts a chilling childhood memory on the family farm; a taxi driver with a missing wife reveals unexpected skills; an inherited painting brings an eerily troubling legacy. The stories, it says, "work at the edges of the sayable", among characters who have a "taste for silence".
Several pieces had won prizes before the book came out. According to the author, "The Painting" won the Aeon Award for speculative fiction, "The Turn" won the Carmel Bird Award in 2015, and a piece of flash fiction took first prize in the UK's Flash 500 competition in 2016. Many are very short, some only a page or two.
Who wrote it
Amanda O'Callaghan is a Brisbane writer and a former advertising executive, with English degrees from King's College London and a PhD from the University of Queensland. She received a Queensland Writers Fellowship in 2016. Her work has also been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Fish Short Story Prize.
Who it is for
- Readers of literary short fiction who like stories that leave a chill and a question.
- Writers interested in flash fiction: the collection shows how much can happen in a page.
- Anyone who reads in short sittings. Each story stands alone.
How to get it
We found no audiobook on Audible Australia, and it was not in either Libby catalogue we check, so this is one for print or ebook. The State Library of Queensland holds a copy.
Common questions
What kind of book is This Taste for Silence?
A collection of literary short stories and flash fiction, published by UQP in 2019, about secrets, silence and unspoken histories.
Is there an audiobook of This Taste for Silence?
We found none on Audible Australia when we checked.