Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These, Amanda Maxwell

Long awaited, and well worth that wait, Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These is the debut short story collection from Sydney-based New Zealander, Amanda Maxwell. Steeped in coming-of-age debris, these tales chart a deft course through landscapes that are interior and exterior, foreign and local, man-made and natural.

Maxwell's writing is like Harold Brodkey's, Miranda July's and Mary Gaitskill's, but with a Southern Hemisphere sensitivity to the way people grow out of places. Hollywood stars and fat schoolgirls alike leap from the page, and from their environs - planes, beaches, suburbia.**As a perfect appendix to the stories, Sarah Larnach's paintings call up the glamour of misspent youth. They invoke Maxwell's characters, who are not necessarily seekers or strugglers, but just are. Yes, adolescence can be painful and confusing, but people live it every day - and isn't that the most awe-inspiring thing?