Author(s): Anne Casey-Hardy

Fiction | Anna's Book Talkers

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.   Two fourteen year-old girls steal a baby from a shopping centre to play single mothers for the day. A gangster’s girlfriend wonders what to do with the pair’s escape money. Teenagers sneak out to the creek for a wild New Years’ Eve party. 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. ‘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

CONSTANT READER STAFF REVIEW: ANNA

I find myself enamoured by short story and essay collections recently, there is something so appealing about a story told in a snapshot. Glimpses of a bigger picture, a peek inside a life, a time, a place.

I chose this collection because I am always attracted to stories about the liminal time between girlhood and womanhood, times of discovery and transition.

These stories are moving and beautiful, surreal and yet so very familiar. Love, grief, friendship, motherhood, sibling connection and estrangement, coming of age in a hostile world – themes and rhythms we know so well, and yet made new and different. 

I will be thinking about these stories for a long time to come.