Having Words With You

‘You crunch out of your row to let him sit beside your best friend. His entrance, your exit. You feel a jab somewhere near the heart.’

Meet the fabulous gourmand whose meal is ruined by the carping of his ex-lover. The teenager who errs in introducing her new friend to her father. The stand-up comic whose words fail at a mystery woman’s invitation. These stories are tough, funny, and unrepentant, showing sides of human nature that may make us uneasy, but which we all share.

Intelligent and fast-paced, rich with the strangeness of everyday life, narrated in taut springy prose, Sarah Quigley’s fiction speaks of the things that drive us to distraction: lovers and loneliness, fears and fantasies – and our private obsessions.

‘A dazzling debut collection… a remarkably confident mixture of styles and themes, characters and situations.’
– The Press

‘Impressive… Quigley’s sentences are beautifully turned.’
– Listener

‘Quigley’s stories are off-beat, lean, tough.’
– North & South

‘Quigley has already attracted plenty of attention and some of these stories have a high-voltage visceral impact.’
– NZ Herald

‘Delivered at a pace, these stories are passionate in their revelations, entertaining… and unrestrained’
– Evening Post