These playful and experimental short stories are set in a distorted but plausible version of our deeply online world – but tenderness is never far
Sinkholes open up all over Melbourne in one of the standout stories in Chris Ames’ funny and absurd debut collection, I Made This Just For You.
Alison, the disaffected narrator of That Is Not A Cat, finds one in her back yard, “small as a beach ball but with a devouring abyss that yawns on forever”. Late one night, she confides in it: “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.” She’s caring for a grandmother with dementia, sleeping with a co-worker, trying to get pregnant by IVF and, when she wants to remind herself that she exists, she drops an item in a digital cart and waits. “Sometimes it takes a minute. But it always comes. Are you still interested, Alison? I never open the emails, but I do save them in a folder titled i’m worth tracking.”