Kirsty's Fans (5)

Kirsty Gunn

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born

January 01, 1960 in New Zealand

About this author

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Kirsty Gunn was born in 1960 in New Zealand and educated at Queen Margaret College and Victoria University, Wellington, and at Oxford, where she completed an M.Phil. After moving to London she worked as a freelance journalist.

Her fiction includes the acclaimed Rain (1994), the story of an adolescent girl and the break-up of her family, for which she won a London Arts Board Literature Award; The Keepsake (1997), the fragmented narrative of a young woman recalling painful memories; and Featherstone (2002), a story concerned with love in all its variety. Her short stories have been included in many anthologies including The Junky's Christmas and Other Yuletide Stories (1994) and The Faber Book of Contemporary Stories about Childhood (1997).

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Books by Kirsty Gunn

Average rating: 3.59 · 258 ratings · 39 reviews · 11 distinct works

	Rain by Kirsty Gunn, Grove Press 3.76 avg rating — 147 ratings — 4 editions	My rating:
	The Keepsake 3.35 avg rating — 43 ratings — 6 editions	My rating:
	This Place You Return To Is Home 4.04 avg rating — 23 ratings — published 1998 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Featherstone 2.72 avg rating — 25 ratings — 5 editions	My rating:
	The Boy and the Sea 3.43 avg rating — 7 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	44 Things: A Year Of Life At Home 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2007 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Histoire Aux Yeux Pales 1.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1999	My rating:
	For A' That: A Celebration Of Burns 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2009	My rating:
	Mr Gilfil's Love Story by George Eliot, Kirsty Gunn (Foreword by) 3.86 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2004 — 8 editions	My rating:
	Potiki by Patricia Grace, Kirsty Gunn (Foreword) 3.49 avg rating — 210 ratings — published 1986 — 8 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Kirsty Gunn

“Hell, she knows why you chew your nails, why your eyes are blue one day, black the next. And all you want to do then is curl yourself with her, snug like a worm, lay your pumping head down in her lap. Have her caress you, be kind. No words because both of you are bodies, wrapping and unwrapping, there's eloquence in your embracings. Eyes closed, you realize everything you've ever wanted to say is right there.”
― Kirsty Gunn, This Place You Return To Is Home

3 people liked it

“Could have been, mind you. And that's one big mother of a conditional. Because who's to say she wanted me in the same way? After all, she left me, didn't she? Maybe I didn't try too hard to get her to stay but what words are there for begging? Please? Don't go, honey? They're crippled halfwits, those sentences, and besides, who uses a lot of words in a friendship anyway? You run out of things to say pretty early on, that's my experience. Sure, you start off thick enough, so many words you could gag on them. The facts, and the sentences - and the sticky tears. Out it comes, out it all comes, the fat story of your life but before you know it you've talked your guts out and there's nothing left to say. You go to her, to confide, and choke up air.”
― Kirsty Gunn, This Place You Return To Is Home

2 people liked it

“We can't change things, you and I. We sit up here all day, under a bad sun, but we can't stop the weather turning. We make our piles of earth and they become graves around us. Nothing's as important as it seems.”
― Kirsty Gunn, This Place You Return To Is Home