Dark Roots

by Cate Kennedy

Devastating, evocative, and richly comic, Dark Roots deftly unveils the traumas that incite us to desperate measures and the coincidences that drive our lives. This arresting collection introduces a new master of the short story.

Following her American debut in The New Yorker, Australian Cate Kennedy delivers a mesmerizing collection of award-winning stories that daringly travel to the deepest depths of the human psyche. In this sublimely sophisticated and compulsively readable collection, Kennedy opens up worlds of finely observed detail to explore the collision between simmering inner lives, the cold outside world, and the hidden motivations that propel us all to act.

In just a few pages, Kennedy captures entire lives, expertly documenting the risks and compromises made in both forging and escaping relationships. Her stories are populated by people on the brink: whether it’s a woman floundering with her own loss and emotional immobility as her lover lies in a coma; a neglected wife who cannot convince her husband of the truth about his two brutish, shamelessly libidinous friends; or a married woman who comes to realize that her too-tight wedding ring isn’t the only thing that’s stuck in her relationship. Each character must make a choice and none is without consequence—even the smallest decisions have the power to destroy or renew, to recover and relinquish.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, School, Contemporary, Australia, Literary Fiction, Short Story Collection

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 18, 2006

About the author

Cate Kennedy is an Australian author based in Victoria. She graduated from University of Canberra and has also taught at several colleges, including The University of Melbourne. She is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won the People’s Choice Award in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2010. It was also shortlisted for The Age fiction prize 2010 and the ASA Barbara Jefferis Award 2010, among others. She is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has twice won The Age Short Story Competition and has appeared in a range of publications, including The New Yorker. Her collection, Dark Roots, was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Cate is also the author of the travel memoir Sing, and Don’t Cry, and the poetry collections Joyflight and Signs of Other Fires. Her latest book is The Taste of River Water: New and Selected Poems by Cate Kennedy, which was published in May 2011 and won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry.

Reviews

[Kylie H · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories. To me it seemed as if someone had gathered up the most depressing excerpts they could find from a series of books and put them together here.
Perhaps this was just not my cup of tea, I like to know the characters and the whole story, this was just a series of glimpses.

[Helen Hagemann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review by Helen Hagemann
I first read one of Kennedy's short stories from Dark Roots in The New Yorker under the title of Black Ice. It was interesting to see that later on, when I purchased the book, published by Scribe, that many of the Americanisms had been revamped back into our Aussie lingo. Chickens went back to "chooks", the State Forest gully came back to just "gully" and clapboards (from the fence) returned as our familiar "palings." Nevertheless, whichever story you might read, Cold Snap is by far a first class story, along with The Testosterone Club - the latter revealing a revenge type scenario of a dominated woman giving the "soon-to-be" ex-husband his comeuppance. This is because he's a brute siding with his sleazy mates, when she explains they made sexual advances. However, she skillfully studies The Home Preserver (bought by the husband) and as readers we are led to believe that the whole footy season will be supplied with their favourite pickled cucumbers, laced with a large quantity of iodine sulphate. As the narrative states, "a chemical which keeps cucumbers firm and non-flaccid...(will have) quite the opposite effect on the male organ."

In Cold Snap, Billy is a young boy who traps rabbits for Mr. Bailey (he's saving for a bike). The father plays an important role keeping the young boy well-trained when it comes to self-sufficiency, rabbiting, working and saving. Moreover, this small family, made up of two - the mother has gone - has been talked about in the town as being backward, much like the in-bred folk that appeared in the film, Deliverance.Billy is a sensitive boy, taking words literally to mean exactly as spoken. This brings humour to the story, as when newcomers in the area (lady's husband on the porch) says things like "The light's on, but no one is at home." Billy sees the speaker as a loony, when 'they are at home and the light switch has been turned off'.
Kennedy appears to favour the act of revenge. In the lady's attempts to poison the trees (she wants a view to the lake), and trees that Billy so dearly loves, she is killed / injured badly (we're not sure) when her car ploughs into a dying tree. As readers we are led to believe that Billy ensnares "the loony lady" to the threatening ways of nature. Billy says, "That's what nature's like, for everything poisonous there's something nearby to cure it if you just look around.'

Other enjoyable stories are Wheelbarrow Thief, Dark Roots, The Light of Coincidence and Kill or Cure. If you like short stories, this is one of the best Australian contemporary reads. Certainly a worthy collection to have on your shelves, and if you are feeling the pangs of oppression from time to time, just pull it down from the shelf, relax on the couch with a cup of coffee, and lose yourself within its 182 pages. You will certainly feel better!

Helen Hagemann (c) 2012

[Timotei · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kennedy is a consistently good but not great author, both in terms of her ideas and writing. Having read Like a House on Fire and now this, Kennedy seems to have a general formula of take a person who has recently had a small but significant event happen and show how that moment ellucidates a relationship (or more occasionally, themselves). When she deviates from this it is a welcome relief, although they are usually not as well written as the stuff she usually does. Dark Roots is more diverse than Like a House on Fire, but the same overall tone and feeling runs through the stories which can be fatiguing.
I like her writing, it is easy to read and easy to imagine. Kennedy uses beautiful imagery and similes that are relateable and make connecting to her characters easy.


Overall, I would recommend this, especially as something to read one story a day, though maybe not at night as most of Kennedy's writing is a bit depressing. Kennedy is able to unpick the common and make it something important. Her writing asks us to stop and think about how little everyday moments might be key to something bigger in our lives, or might explain parts of ourselves that have not had a moment of clarity.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing in its attempts at exploiting everyday problems in order for us to reflect on ourselves as individuals. Kennedy is herself a very talented writer, but at some points in a few of the stories it just seemed too boring to me. To me personally a short story like Kennedy's is supposed to somewhat peel humanity's face off to show our everyday ugliness, but through the drug addicted eyes of the protagonist in "habit" I just wanted to put the book down.Ultimately the majority of characters in the book have no sense of identity or sense of belonging so they either have to find one of just sit in dank stagnation while life passes by.

In her story entitled "Dark Roots" we have a women drowning in vanity in attempts to appease her lover who is much younger than her. She must always dodge the mirror in the bathroom before it "unsteams", this is Kennedy commenting on how we try to avoid our own hideousness and how much we want to evade the truth. It is particularly prominent in that story where Kennedy's goal is reached, it is also in second person so the tone of the story is somewhat damning to those who try to hide from the true unpleasantness of being vain.

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[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kennedy's stories carry so many similar themes to Carvers short stories. They centre a lot around isolation, people breaking apart, love lost, silence, and heartache.
Very enjoyable (without soundly too sadistic considering the above), some personal favourites:
-Angel
-Resize
-Seizure
-The Light of Coincidence
-The Correct Name of Things (so good!)
-Wheelbarrow Thief

[Piper · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I liked Seizure and the Light of Coincidence best. Also quite liked Flotsam, reading it was quite calming, it felt like I was reading poetry.

[Elke · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book in itself feels like an English assignment, written with no intent except to get it done.

[Logan Chandler · Rating 3 out of 5]

My fav stories in order:
1) The Testosterone Club
2) Dark Roots
3) Resize
4) Wheelbarrow Thief
5) What Thou and I did, Till We Loved
6) Angel
7) Cold Snap
8) Seizure
9) Sea Burial
10) Kill or Cure
11) Habit
12) Direct Action
13) The Light of Coincidence
14) Flotsam
15) A Pitch Too High For The Human Ear
16) Soundtrack
17) The Correct Names of Things

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cate Kennedy is a superlative writer of short stories. I read and loved her collection A House on Fire a few years back. This is an earlier collection. It gave me just as much satisfaction.

The title story wasn't my favourite but is a good example of how Kennedy creates her characters and places them in challenging situations. The unnamed woman is turning 40 and anxious about ageing. She has a younger lover. The story is clever, funny and insightful. In other stories, women seek subtle (or not so subtle)revenge on their husbands or partners for failure to support their relationships. In one story, a woman finds herself isolated in a lonely farm, not the romantic rural life she envisaged. In another, a motherless boy is cruelly treated by an older woman but finds a way to make her suffer.

All these stories are worth reading and some are brilliant. Wonderful language. Clever ideas. I read this on an e-book from the library but enjoyed it so much that I have bought it on my Kindle. It's just the sort of book to dip into again in the future.

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't too sure about this when I fist started it. The last book of short stories I read was Miranda July's collection. I liked it, but I wasn't enthralled. This is completely different. I LOVE these stories. It is a rare thing when I read a short story that I want it to be more than a short story. What I love about Cate Kennedy is that she is totally in my head. Even though I might not experience what is going on this all of the stories, I can somehow relate to all of them.

There were a couple of stories that I found amazing and wanted more of the story. Obviously "The Testosterone Club" was one of them. The idea of slowly killing her husband and friends by pickled vegetables was fantastic. "Seizure" was also one of my favorites. I can't wait till more from her comes out. I really really enjoyed this.

[Tamika Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kennedy's ability to capture the harsh emotions of people on the precipice of life-changing ordeals, drastic decisions or rooted into an unhealthy situation, captivated me throughout the collection of stories. Opening with "what thou and I did, till we loved," I was immediately drawn into her simple yet enthralling style of writing. The reality of life, having to cope with the everyday mundane after tragedy is something that kennedy shows to be the real hardship that one faces. While there is sarcastic and dry humour to balance the grave stories, they are never truly what they seem. Overall the collection was a gripping one, however I confess there were a few that didn't quite live up to the high standards of the rest. However, I must concede that I still found them to be though provoking, and i was utterly absorbed throughout. Highly recommended!!

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lovely surprising find this book was. I needed to replace the book of Annie Proulx short stories for my year 12 literature class full of Jehovah's Witnesses. Didn't think they'd appreciate Brokeback mountain. Most of these stories are a delightful read. Only a few are a bit dense ("The correct names for things"). Most of them are just a few pages long with a clever twist at the end. A couple of them made me think about the similarities with my own life ("a pitch too high for the human ear"). Cate Kennedy is a similar age to me and lives/d in Melbourne. These stories make me think I should be doing something like this too. Should be a lovely replacement for the Annie Proulx stories.

[Larry Stylinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

fucking shittest book I've ever read oh my god its so bad and trying so hard to mean something when in reality its just the biggest waste of time!


----

edited like 5 years later: i picked this up a while ago and read thru some of the stories and liked them. I think i didn't like it before because i didn't like the short story format in general lmao and also found a lot of the stories weird and depressing, and i don't like things that seem to be depressing for no reason. I don't like things masquerading as 'deep' just because they're depressing. but yeah. I reread some stories and they weren't too bad. I was a bit harsh in my original review.... sorry.

[Athena Matisse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. The repeated use of 2nd person amongst these stories turned otherwise possibly interesting ideas into confusing rambles which were overly reliant on inherently dramatic themes such as murder, assault etc.
However, stories I did enjoy include:
-The Light of Coincidence
-Wheelbarrow Thief
-Resize

[Saleh MoonWalker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Onvan : Dark Roots: Stories - Nevisande : Cate Kennedy - ISBN : 802170455 - ISBN13 : 9780802170453 - Dar 182 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2006

[Chris Waterford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved most of these stories----the writing is superb and the stories surprisingly good---often with a twist in the tail. Highly recommended.
8.5/10

[Maddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is interesting and very unique. At the start I thought the stories were all pretty unique too, but I found that they become pretty formulaic, some more than others, and after analysing some of the stories for lit in school I just found a lot of the themes and literary devices to be overused and repetitive. Initially ‘Flotsam’ was probably my least favourite, but after reading the others it’s definitely a lot higher on the list. It’s striking and it’s got just a little something extra that the others don’t have, but it wasn’t exactly interesting. The parts with Matthew were the best, and although I really couldn’t care less about the present-day sections, the story wouldn’t be the same without them, but there’s still a part of me that would rather just read about the past. I almost never rate short story collections highly because I don’t like how a lot of them don’t really amount to anything. At first I thought it was just the ones I was reading, but I guess it’s pretty much all of them. Maybe I should stick to novels.

[Felicity Waterford · Rating 5 out of 5]

17 short stories, beautifully capturing human experiences, revenge, comeuppance and love and often with a twist at the end.
My favourite is Seizure , an exquisite story about cherishing.
My 10/10s were Habit (super clever story about cocaine); Resize (about a couple resizing their wedding bands); The Testosterone Club (what yiu can do with preserved pickles); Angel; Seizure; Direct Action (the look on his dads face).
Then the 9/10s included The Light of Coincidence (about a violin found at a market); Sea Burial and Kill or Cure.
The rest also scored 7s and 8s. Some of these had unsatisfactory endings for me to score them higher though the writing remained excellent.

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
Had this book for school and didn't initially think much of it but I actually really enjoyed the stories. Some were more open ended and symbolic than others, but I really enjoyed the emotions in the stories. Most had really interesting takes on human nature and how we behave, especially with other people. Some were darker and had bigger tipping points than others. 'Resize' was probably my favourite.

[Nancy Appiah · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s a collection of short stories but Omd itheu we’re so dead it took me 3 day to finish a short ass book 4.12/10

[Cris Cuthbertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, sharp, subtle stories. I picked this up in a second hand bookshop and loved every word.

[Camille · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a known problem that rating a short story collection is supremely difficult. There are always stories that you love and stories that you don't love so much. But that's one of the reasons I love reading them, every one is different.

Somewhat strangely, and in contrast to another reviewer, I felt that many of these stories, particularly the first ones, were very American and had an American setting. I struggled to find a sense of place in Australia for most of the stories. This was a bit of a jolt as I was expecting this collection to have a profound sense of Australianness and I think it impacted overall as I was grappling with that and didn't just take them as stories with a universal setting. I wanted it to feel Australian.

I finished this a few weeks ago, and I don't recall many of the titles of the stories. I hadn't felt they matched up well with the stories they were headlining, and some were really long, so perhaps this is why.

The best stories for me were Cold Snap, The Testosterone Club and Sea Burial. I guess I relished a bit of revenge and in these stories you really get just the punchline of the revenge which you can get away with in a short story unlike in a novel. Perhaps that is why it is so delicious.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories carry a very clear timestamp from the years they were written (1997-2005), which makes reading them an exercise in both nostalgia and cultural cringe.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I first came across Cate Kennedy's short stories in an anthology of the Modern Australian Short Stories anthologies. While these anthologies contained a whole host of brilliantly stories by fantastically talented authors, it was Kennedy's work that captured my attention and interest. After finally getting my hands on her first collection of short stories, I feel like the wait was worth it. These are stories about the darkness in life - sometimes they felt like still, perfect moments captured in times, and sometimes the effect was so that I needed to take a few moments away from the stories, to let it sink in. This is an utterly fantastic collection of writing and I can't wait to get my hands on Kennedy's second collection of short stories.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really, really liked this book of short stories. The writer does a masterful job of showing psychology and character through action and small details. Disclosure: this book was a Goodreads give away that arrived to my house for the former owner shortly after I moved in. I had no forwarding address so threw it on a shelf thinking I would get to it some day. While doing some house cleaning, I opened it up thinking I would see if it was any good or send it to Goodwill. I wish I had read it two years ago, but glad I finally did. Excellent writing. I could see myself reading these stories again and again.

[Bonnie Ellemor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not too much of a difference from 'Like a House on Fire'. We did a super in-depth study with the school not to mention that I had to teach it and the process was RELENTLESS! So a lot of the similar patterns in this collection to me is somewhat repetitive and I can see Kennedy's attempt in engaging some more multicultural aspects yet not so successfully. In Angel, the war concepts are quite unfathomable with the limitation of a short story. Whereas in Seizure, the minor conflicts of a long-time relationship are made lengthy with too much details over unimportant juxtaposing of the seizure scene.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved it! I have a soft spot for short stories, but it takes a particular talent to write a good one. Cate Kennedy obviously has talent to spare.

I think a story should stand alone but have a sense of context - something to indicate what led up to it and what will possibly follow it. Her characters are real, flaws, habits and all, and I liked her language and descriptions.

In fact, I enjoyed them so much, that I started re-reading some immediately after I finished the book. Hope others enjoy them as much as I do.

[Nancy Freund · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cate Kennedy talks about short story writing as diving into a pool, touching something deep and true, and then surfacing with it in hand. Every one of these stories accomplishes this dive, this grabbing of intensity and truth, and this surfacing with exquisite finesse. Her writing is remarkable and an honor to read.

[Anne Connolly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cate Kennedy is one of the most underrated writers in Australia today. Her gift is for the short story, her well chosen sentences and story structure. I loved this set of stories. Almost a Shirley Jackson quality about them. For anyone who wants more of an Australian reality set of writings, try this.

[Ami · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, Jonathan was right: these stories are wildly uneven, with the good ones being "holy shit wow that's amazing" and the not-so-good ones being "zzzzzzz."

Regardless, you have to read the first story in the collection or I will be mad at you forever.