Conversations on the Edge: Stories of Delusion

Claudette wants to be a moral warrior seeking enlightenment but finds it hard to resist the convenience of being a kept woman. Lorna tries to salvage her pride by fabricating a romantic past. Marcie copes with her husband's rejection by fantasising about a man she hardly knows. The women in Kim Robinson-Walcott's lightly linked stories want more, deserve better and know what they should¿ do, and yet . . . Sometimes we're our own worst enemies, and delusion can feel like the only safe path through uncertainty.Over the course of thirty years, these women reckon with the illusions, insecurities and unfulfilled desires that have shaped their lives, and all the while the question lingers: Can we transcend our own limitations?"The women in this book are often left unsatisfied but you the reader will never be. Not with a gifted storyteller like Kim Robinson-Walcott laying bare the workings of the heart. The pace is quick and the language spare as she forces us to witness women teetering on the edge: Will heart rule head, or vice versa? The terrain of these stories is not unfamiliar for we all have all been there in one form or another, but never have we been asked to examine our own delusions with such clarity, wit and sometimes humour, as through the conversations of these 10 delusionary others."- Olive Senior, author of Paradise Once