by Paul Mitchell

PB 288 | 198 x 129 | ISBN: 9781925227109 | September 2016 | $24.99| Fiction | Also available as an ebook | MidnightSun Publishing
Distributed by NewSouth Books

Kick the darkness until it bleeds

Three generations are forced to confront the pervasive violence that hangs over them like a ghost, and the distances to which they have carried their forebears’ pain.

We. Are. Family. is a sensitive and rugged episodic novel which ruminates on the damaging idea of Australian masculinity with tenderness and dry humour. Paul Mitchell unravels the twisting threads that tie us to the past and the trauma that is handed down through families.

Taking cues from Tim Winton’s The Turning, it is a cyclic meditation on the slow grind of life and the interconnectedness of identity and family.

‘Mitchell’s writing is challenging, exhilarating and touched with a deep sense of humanity’
Tony Birch

‘[Mitchell] succeeds in creating a domestic fiction that is at once panoramic and suffocating. It is in equal parts reminiscent of Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap and Tim Winton’s The Turning.’
Books+Publishing, 4 stars

Paul Mitchell’s wry and moving considerations of society’s undercurrents chronicle an unsettlingly recognisable Australia. His three poetry collections have received national prizes and wide acclaim, and his short story collection Dodging the Bull was included in the 2008 The Age Summer Read program. He is also a playwright, screenwriter and essayist.

Mitchell’s varied oeuvre explores the beauty in the seemingly mundane, the troubled history of Australian masculinity, and finds spirituality in the murky depths of life. He has continued this exploration with his sensitive and rugged first novel, We. Are. Family.

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