John Millard

The Cloud Forest & Other Stories John Millard

One curious young boy observes the courtship of spiders as he contemplates life without a father. Another delivers tracts for Lord's Assembly and stumbles into something awkward to do with adults. Yet another gathers stones to a shroud dead dog. A young man visits his disreputable, unwelcoming uncle to hear a curious tale. A medium finds herself rumbled when a spirit she conjures kisses and tells all. A wannabe Bonnie and Clyde go on a spree round the commuter belt. A former sex worker collides with her past. A singer performs to soldiers at a turning point in history.

There are inexplicable mysterious things out there in the cloud forest - concrete or lush - small moments of discovery, enlightenment and recognition.

Permeated with dark ironic humour and a melancholic sense of the absurd, these thirteen stories are fragments of the lives of their characters, who in being ordinary - honest or decidedly not - are exceptional.