Gayla Reid grew up in New South Wales and has lived in Vancouver on and off since 1967. In To Be There With You, her debut collection of stories, Reid writes about women and men who grow up Catholic and come to adulthood during the turbulent decade in the 1960s. Moving fluidly between past and present, between Australia, Southeast Asia and Canada, they live in an uncertain world of ambivalent desire and sexual yearning, of unrequited love, betrayal and ambiguous friendships, of high ideals and the Vietnam War. In her spare, ...
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Gayla Reid grew up in New South Wales and has lived in Vancouver on and off since 1967. In To Be There With You, her debut collection of stories, Reid writes about women and men who grow up Catholic and come to adulthood during the turbulent decade in the 1960s. Moving fluidly between past and present, between Australia, Southeast Asia and Canada, they live in an uncertain world of ambivalent desire and sexual yearning, of unrequited love, betrayal and ambiguous friendships, of high ideals and the Vietnam War. In her spare, lucid prose, Reid portrays the lives of her characters with intense feeling and a remarkably strong sense of place and time. 'Gayla Reid has an exact and mordant eye for the little incongruities, vulnerabilities and self-deceptions of humankind, and she is especially knowledgeable and observant of the slippages and double-exposures experienced by the growing tribe of twentieth-century nomads for whom more than one global patch has come to be home turf. With dry, pared-down lyricism, she offers us constant epiphanies. Already justly acclaimed in Canada, her introduction to her other - and original - home turf of Australia is overdue' Janette Turner Hospit
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