A plane in the distance, artillery, his father waiting, and the boy wonders what to do. As with every story in this collection, the child born into a world he can't comprehend, but stands waiting for answers, overcome with possibilities. The Boy in Time charts this child's progress from the Outer Hebrides to a Mongolian desert, from war to kidnapping, a Midwestern American nightmare, falling from the wheel-well of a Dreamliner. Stephen Orr's impressionistic take on the short story captures a child's bewilderment of what it's like to be alive.
Praise for Stephen Orr
'Stephen Orr is a beautiful craftsman, patiently unfolding a range of ways of looking at an intoxicatingly complex story.' - Michael McGirr, Age
'The nightmare of history plays out in far-flung locales – from the Hebrides to the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region - and is awakened through lyricism and perfectly etched sentences.' - Brisbane Times
Stephen Orr was born in Adelaide in 1967, studied science and education and taught in a range of country and metropolitan schools. One of his early plays, Attempts to Draw Jesus, became his first novel, shortlisted for the Australian/Vogel's Literary Award. Since then he has published ten novels (most recently, Sincerely, Ethel Malley) and a volume of short stories (Datsunland). He has been nominated for awards such as the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Miles Franklin Award and the International Dublin Literary Award.
