Pushing Back

 Pushing Back

Reviewed By  Janet Mawdesley       September 4, 2021

 

Author  John Kinsella

Distributor:      Transit Lounge
ISBN:                 978-1-925760-71-2,
Publisher:         Transit Lounge
Release Date:   March 2021  

   Website:   https://transitlounge.com.au

FaceBook:    

YouTube:   

Instagram:   

X Formally Twitter:    

John Kinsella has a very keen perception of the frailties of humanity which he captures with a poetic beauty in his latest work of short stories, Pushing Back. His beautifully written words expand into a variety of stories each one a perfect moment in time.

A mechanic happier with his machines than the normal rhythm of life, which leaves him wondering, bewildered by the almost careless cruelty he sees in his work life, the strange structured pattern of his married life.

A funeral, the celebrant in a hurry, the heat scorching, the sadness and almost embarrassment of the final goodbye permeating the air. No one speaks. The obligatory cup of tea, the regrets of an old shearer for not having spoken, the mother, lost in her grief asking why, saying they would have listened, understood. The mourners, shearers waiting for the formalities to finish to return to the work of the day: shearing!

The layers that bind a small country town are torn apart when an election has to be held, splitting a community that was once seen as solid, pitting neighbour against neighbour, in the obsessive desire to win. Dirty laundry hung out on the public line, the infighting so bad it attracts the attention of national media and eventually the Police. The town never to be the same again, the very basic tenants that once formed the spirit of the community now gone in the mad drive of overwhelming ambition.

In many of the stories Kinsella has drawn on his life experiences which adds a raw honesty to the vignette’s to create an immersive emotion, the words pushing back the many layers of what is referred to as civilization to capture the very essence of humanity, to reveal the truth which lies so thinly disguised below the surface.

Kinsella’s work never ceases to impress and as always his words linger long in the memory, beautiful, disturbing, introspective and captivating. Like many things in life, Pushing Back from Kinsella should be enjoyed little by little to be able to truly appreciate the rich emotion of each perfectly captured, crafted but fleeting, moment in time.

Fiction