This prize winning short story collection is sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, but always startlingly original. The Weight of a Human Heart turns the rules of storytelling on their head.
A series of graphs illustrates the disintegration of a marriage, step by excruciating step.
A literary feud – and an affair – play out in the book review section of a national newspaper. The heartbreaking story of a Rwandan boy is hidden in the pages of his English exam paper.
A young girl learns her mother’s disturbing secrets through the broken key on a typewriter. The Weight of a Human Heart heralds the arrival of an author destined for literary stardom.
‘In O’Neill’s hands, the minor art form of the short story becomes major art.’ Bookseller (Australia)
‘Full of wit, irony, wild invention, love and pain — and sometimes shocking power’ Paddy O’Reilly (The Fine Colour Of Rust)
‘By turns acerbic, playful and serious, O’Neill is equally at home with satire and pathos’ Cate Kennedy (The World Beneath)
Author
About Ryan O'Neill
Ryan O’Neill was born in Glasgow in 1975. He lived in Africa, Europe and Asia before settling in Newcastle, Australia, with his wife and two daughters. His fiction has appeared in The Best Australian Stories, The Sleepers Almanac, Meanjin, New Australian Stories, Wet Ink, Etchings and Harvest. His work has won the Hal Porter and Roland Robinson awards and been shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Steele Rudd Award and the Age Short-Story Prize. He teaches at the University of Newcastle.