Author(s): Elizabeth Smither

NZ Fiction

Three musical sisters honour their mother with a piano recital every year in her memory. They compete with one another, practising in secret to see who can be the best. In other stories, music, food, and restaurants are themes. There is a woman who fends off a seducer by cooking up a storm; Fire Lady prepares flambe dishes in a restaurant. There is a cat called Min; an agonising breakup in a luxury hotel; a young woman obsessed with her breasts. The stories cover a wide range from schooldays and ballet lessons ('The Soul of Kate') to advanced age ('Scottie') where an elderly woman is the pet of a group of rakish young men. The style is engaging, humorous, but invariably compassionate. Introducing Elizabeth Smither as a fellow of The Academy of New Zealand Literature Louise O'Brien writes: 'I read Elizabeth Smither for the optimistic and freeing possibilities in her resistance to closure or conclusion, in character, narrative and, also, in life more broadly. Her stories acknowledge the uncontrollable messiness of life, the ragged edges of a self, the chaos of experience, the many aspects of an individual, and finds melody in the discord. Using multiple narrative perspectives and voices, moving between multiple places and times, her novels and stories accumulate the facets of a life and native without ever suggesting that these can be exhausted.'