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Short-listed for the Steele Rudd Award, Queensland Premier’s Awards. |
An opera singer returns from Europe to find his music teacher’s wife who taught him the meaning of true passion… A teenage girl competing in an Eisteddfod at Port Arthur finds that the brutal historic site and her hostess have more than a few secrets – and ghosts – in common… Migrating north to Queensland, a man finds his lover immersed in more than a change of scene…
Award-winning fiction from the author of Liars and Lovers and Primary Instinct.
Our first short fiction title in the Literature Series,launched on 28 March 1999, was the short fiction collection Triangles by David P Reiter, with cover illustration by Cate Collopy.
A separated man finds a book of poems written by an old flame that tempts him back to a love that seemed too good to be true at the
time…
An opera singer returns from Europe to find his music teacher’s wife who taught him the meaning of true passion…
A teenage girl competing in an Eisteddfod at Port Arthur finds that the brutal historic site and her hostess have more than a few secrets
— and ghosts — in common…
Migrating north to Queensland, a man finds his lover immersed in more than a change of scene…
All hell breaks loose on a cul-de-sac when two otherwise married people admit to having it off — right under the nose of Neighbourhood Watch…
Triangles was first runner-up for the 2000 Steele Rudd Short Fiction Award, as announced 18 October 2000 at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival. The AU$15,000 competition is the premier award for short fiction in Australia.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Publishing webmeister, Brisbane-based refugee from North America and poetic PhD — his four books include a Queensland Premier’s Award-winner — David P. Reiter probes the algebraic complexity of relationships in his first short story collection, Triangles.
This narrative geometry is far from Euclidean, however, a satiric eye and deceptively understated style subverting expected QEDs. Always polished and generally spare, Reiter’s expositions of love and/or lust lost and/or found amuse and sometimes bemuse. Some linger longer in the mind than others, although his take is constantly fresh, his sensibility sophisticated. A similarity in story-to-story tone is but a minor flaw in what is an impressive assembly.
– Murray Waldren, The Australian
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
With everything from suburban sex trysts to encounters with bears in the wilds of the Canadian woods, Brisbane’s David Reiter gives his readers plenty of variety in his latest book, Triangles.
Well known on the local poetry and publishing scene, David is American born and a long time resident of Canada, before coming here. He runs the cutting-edge outfit Interactive Press, which publishes in book form and on the Internet
As a fan of Hemingway (a recent book of his poetry was entitled Hemingway in Spain and Selected Poems) it’s no surprise that he’s keen on the short story, a form he’s well on the way to mastering. His stories vary in style and range from the poignant to the plain funny. The first story, ‘Still Life’, is a touching piece about poetry and lost love. In ‘Touching Bear’, the mood turns humorous as a young hiker is sent trail mapping in the forest on his university holidays by a lascivious park supervisor … “attractive enough to string along several men, so I doubted that she’d shed many tears over my remains when they were inadvertently discovered, weeks after I’d been dismembered, by a troop of boy scouts scrounging for arrowheads”.
Other stories include a tale about ructions in a suburban Brisbane cul-de-sac when two otherwise married people admit to having sex – right under the nose of the local Neighbourhood Watch; a yarn about migrating to Queensland and a man more at home with his dogs than his family.
– Phil Brown, Brisbane News
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
What are the stories like? I surely found them easy to read, easy to continue to the next one. There is neat phrasing to enjoy: ‘Not a thread on her uniform was at ease’ (“The Female Factory”); ‘I learned from a very young age that God is off to the West, on top of mountains of implacable silence’ (“Touching Bear”); and ‘Is it our past or future we see overtaking us at the speed of light as the present cools like a dead star?’ (“As Good as a Fresh Lover”).
And the best is saved for last. The title story tingles like a tango that has gone 24 bars too long, and ends on a satisfying, wry grin-inducing downbeat. The orchestra is left feeling happier than the dancers.
– Ross Clark, Social Alternatives