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A World of Other People

(The Eliot Quartet #2)

Steven Carroll

3.70 · Rating details · 276 ratings · 62 reviews

Set in 1941 during the Blitz, we follow the love affair of Jim, an Australian pilot in Bomber Command, and Iris, a forthright young Londoner, finding her voice as a writer.

Haunted by secrets and malign coincidence, the couple struggles to build a future free of society's thin-lipped disapproval. Iris shares rooftop firewatching duties with the poet TS Eliot, who unwittingl ...more

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Paperback, 288 pages

Published April 1st 2013 by Fourth Estate

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Jun 07, 2013 Steve lovell rated it it was amazing

Sometimes I just hate books and book writers – I really do. Those who know me may be aghast at this confession of abhorrence given my track record as a reader, but matters will become clearer as you read on!

Hell, I read the reviews in the weekend broadsheets and time and time again I encounter something right up my alley – then I remember that huge pile that sits awaiting beside my bed – not to mention the shelves full languishing back up north in Burnie. So I hate books when it means I have to Sometimes I just hate books and book writers – I really do. Those who know me may be aghast at this confession of abhorrence given my track record as a reader, but matters will become clearer as you read on!

Hell, I read the reviews in the weekend broadsheets and time and time again I encounter something right up my alley – then I remember that huge pile that sits awaiting beside my bed – not to mention the shelves full languishing back up north in Burnie. So I hate books when it means I have to think more than twice about adding another one to that pile.

I hate books when I meander innocently into one of my favourite bookshops – say Fullers, the State Cinema or, when in Melbourne, the St Kilda/Carlton Readings. Usually within five minutes I espy half a dozen or so tomes that would certainly be worth the dough to buy and read – that is, until I remember, yes, that pile beside the bed. The other day, just inside the door of the first establishment listed, I spotted a copy of ‘Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation’ by Judith Mackrell and it immediately piqued my interest. Of course that gilded age is all the rage at the minute because of a certain film doing the rounds, and though I was sorely tempted I – you guessed it – remembered that pile. As it is, I am currently reading of one of those dangerous women, Scott Fitzgerald’s missus in ‘Zelda’, a fictionalized account by Therese Anne Fowler. Another of the Jazz Age six is the subject of a novel that sits near the top of said pile – ‘The Last Nude’ (Ellis Avery) on the life and times of the remarkable artist Tamara de Lempicka. So the volume was placed back in its spot and I wandered deeper into the emporium of books to see what else would tempt me – plenty, as it turns out, but I refrained.

Now the main reason for those piles, up north and down by the river, was because, in my final year of teaching, I stockpiled. I was fearful that my years of retirement would be chastened by impecuniousness, thus I’d need a goodly number of tomes to be ‘going on with’. It has since turned out that life post sixty isn’t as straightened as initially feared, but that doesn’t diminish the pile.

After reading Steven Carroll’s ‘A World of Other People’ there is another title that I now wished I had chased up and purchased - Lara Feigel’s ‘The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War’. You see this tome is a factual account of the lives of prominent literary figures during the London Blitz. Amongst those luminaries was TS Eliot – he of ‘The Wasteland’ and ‘Cats’ fame. I remember studying the former during my matriculation years, understanding very little of it, but still feeling it was ‘awesome’ - the work of a far superior mind to that of a callow provincial youth. And it is the one and same great man who features in ‘The World of Other People’. He is at first no literary behemoth, merely a roof-top warden, spotting fires around war torn Covent Garden. Carroll’s publication is loosely based around a poem from his celebrated ‘Four Quartets’ – his ‘flaming phoenix’ now taking the form of a crash landed Wellington bomber. Eliot’s fellow spotter is an ‘engaged’ young woman, Iris. In a state of co-incidence she later encounters the pilot of that plane, a clearly disturbed Australian airman, in a London park. Despite his damaged persona, she commits to a very truncated affair – truncated (spoiler alert) due to his sad and early demise. His is not the sort of death usually associated with Bomber Command.

It is a pretty simple tale really, and there’s the rub. Pared back to its bare bones, there is not much more than a short story in it – a novella at most. And now comes the reason I hate writers – or, at least, writers of Carroll’s calibre.

Despite the joy I receive from producing my own scribblings, I could not possibly, even with enough years given back to me, match the expertise of wordsmithery that Carroll produces in this resonating publication. Out from a very simple storyline he has crafted a work of rare class; one where beauty lies within his expertise with language rather than the narrative alone. He is able to layer and layer to weave a luminous, gossamer web of delight – heartrendingly poignant in its depiction of the waste that is war.

The short time the two lovers have together is intensely handled. He also fills Iris’ decision to reluctantly part with the Aussie pilot to the brim with a sense of the waste of it all. There’s that word again – ‘waste’. They have but one window of time for reconciliation, but that is so gut-wrenchingly taken from them by something so simple, but so cruel, that any reader with a modicum of soul knows she/he is under the spell of a master.

Despite the comparison, I fully intend to plod on with my ruminations and attempts at fiction with the wonderful encouragement of a cherished daughter and partner. Besides, it keeps me out of mischief. If I wrote less that pile of books would diminish with some alacrity, allowing me to further indulge in binges of book buying. But writing for me brings equal joy to the reading – so my conundrum will remain.

I really do hate books. I really do hate writers.

...more

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May 15, 2013 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it really liked it

Shelves: librarybooks

‘There is meaning here, the voice says, but you must find it yourself.’

T.S. Eliot and his poetry, especially `Little Gidding' (1942) from Four Quartets, play a significant part in this novel. The poem is presented as a consequence of what Eliot saw, one night, as a fire-watcher on the Faber and Faber building in London at the end of the Blitz during World War II.

Iris, a fellow fire-watcher, was with Eliot that night, and later receives a copy of `Little Gidding' inscribed `To Iris, who was there ‘There is meaning here, the voice says, but you must find it yourself.’

T.S. Eliot and his poetry, especially `Little Gidding' (1942) from Four Quartets, play a significant part in this novel. The poem is presented as a consequence of what Eliot saw, one night, as a fire-watcher on the Faber and Faber building in London at the end of the Blitz during World War II.

Iris, a fellow fire-watcher, was with Eliot that night, and later receives a copy of `Little Gidding' inscribed `To Iris, who was there'.

Jim, a pilot from Essendon in Victoria, is the pilot of a disabled Wellington - with a dove painted on its side - which flies over Iris and Eliot that night. The plane crashes, with Jim the only survivor. Jim cannot remember all the details of the crash and the period immediately afterwards.

`The dove descending breaks the air/ With flame of incandescent terror'

Sometime after the accident, Jim and Iris meet in a park. Iris asks Jim if he is alright, and leaves him with a rose. They are attracted to each other, and have an affair: war is everywhere around them with no end in sight; every moment is precious and to be experienced. Jim is tormented by the plane crash and what happened to his crew, while Iris is conscious that she has a previous understanding with another man. She tells Jim of this, and when their telephone conversation ends, so does their contact.

`Then there is special time, time that contains incident and meaning in ways that ordinary time doesn't.'

Sometime later Jim attends Eliot's reading of `Little Gidding' at St Stephen's, South Kensington, hoping to see Iris there as it is the church she used to attend and where she met Eliot. Iris is not there, and Jim thinks of leaving. But then he hears Eliot's `poet's voice' - a voice that is detached from the emotions that surely create poetry, he stays, and finds memories in the words.
Later, exhausted, Jim finds his way to Little Gidding where he dies in the snow. And later still, Iris writes her own brutally realistic account of Jim's plane crash.

`What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.'

I picked this novel up a few hours ago, and could not put it down. The characters of Jim and Iris are finely drawn and, having listened to a recording of T.S Eliot read some of his poems I have my own sense of his `poet's voice'. `Little Gidding' is a great poem: what Eliot saw and wrote is a very different telling of what Jim experienced. And that, for me, is one of the messages in the novel: perception and reality, memory and experience each depend on different individual assessments. Relationships have strengths, weaknesses and different dimensions. Reality is relative and memory is flawed.

This is Steven Carroll's ninth and most recent novel. It is the second of his novels in which T.S. Eliot plays a part.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith ...more

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Jul 12, 2015 Catherine Hanrahan rated it it was amazing

A World of Other People is set in London during the blitz. The first chapter opens with a man escaping from ‘F for Freddie’, a bomber that has crash landed in a field. But confusingly, the chapter is dated March 1946. The bomber’s pilot will not remember anything more than crawling out of the wreck before it explodes, the only survivor. He awakens to:

‘Smiles all round, but other people’s smiles. Laugher, but other people’s. A world of other people.’

The story switches back to May, 1941, where Iri A World of Other People is set in London during the blitz. The first chapter opens with a man escaping from ‘F for Freddie’, a bomber that has crash landed in a field. But confusingly, the chapter is dated March 1946. The bomber’s pilot will not remember anything more than crawling out of the wreck before it explodes, the only survivor. He awakens to:

‘Smiles all round, but other people’s smiles. Laugher, but other people’s. A world of other people.’

The story switches back to May, 1941, where Iris has just accepted a proposal of marriage from a young man about to leave for the front. But she’s ambivalent about the engagement and wonders what love really is. In addition to her boring civil service job, Iris is also a fire-watcher, checking for fires on the roof of a publisher’s house with T.S Elliot. But on her first night, there’s no raid, just a low flying Wellington bomber, with flames coming from the engine, flying very low over London. Elliot only reappears once more but his presence and poem are integral to how the story plays out.

Then another jump forward in time, to September 1942, when Iris meets Jim, a young Australian fighter pilot who has been injured. He is sitting on a park bench, drenched in the misery of post-traumatic stress. ‘Are you all right?’ Iris asks and Jim answers that he is not. So begins a love story and the connection to all other elements of the story.

Carroll used the T.S Elliot poem ‘Little Gidding’, the last of a quartet, as the basis for this story. The first poem, ‘Burnt Norton’ inspired Carroll’s The Lost Life, for which A World of Other People is the sequel. The poetic meaning and symbolism of this story were largely lost on me because I know almost nothing about poetry, but that made not a blind bit of difference.

This is one of the most heartbreaking, beautiful and affecting books I’ve read in a long while. The pace is slow and plot is almost non-existent but the structure is a masterpiece. The way the small elements of scenes are woven together to lead inexorably to the devastating climax shows what a skilled writer Carroll is. Only the most crucial dialogue is included and sometimes the same scene is told over again from a different character’s point of view. The painstakingly slow scenes, where the same ideas tend to loop back on each other, repeating themselves over and over, takes some getting used to but really draw the reader into the interior life of the characters, if you are prepared to stay the distance with them. Carroll said at the Sydney Writers Festival that he was intrigued by the rhythm and circularity of poetry and has tried to incorporate it into his own writing.

This book doesn’t aim to immerse the reader in life during the London blitz or demonstrate the skill and daring of fighter pilots and its slow speed won’t appeal to everyone. But the way this book ends made me cry and its one of the most beautifully written and structured stories I’ve read in a long time. ...more

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Jul 08, 2015 Dilly Dalley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: writers-australian, fiction

I had to have a small, non-life threatening but nonetheless uncomfortable operation. After my family dropped me at the hospital I realised I hadn't brought any reading that was truely engrossing so when they wanted to help me recuperate I suggested they find me a good novel. When they returned from Manuka with A World of Other people I was in for a real treat. I couldn't sleep very well in the hospital bed so I read through most of the night. I loved this book. It is slow and reflective, deeply ...more

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Nov 11, 2013 Mandy rated it it was amazing

I am a fan of Steven Carroll and I loved this book, it is one to be re-read many times.

His writing style is beautifully concise and the "between the lines" bits are packed in this moving and evocative story centred around WWII. War has always provided much inspiration for fabulous literature in the past and will continue to do so, but it was so good to be able to compare the idealistic view (Eliot) with the realistic one in Iris. I think Carroll has absolutely nailed the precious fragility of li ...more

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Apr 09, 2014 Carolyn rated it liked it

I expected better of this novel, having enjoyed Carroll’s previous work and having listened to him talk about this book at Adelaide Writers Week. Carroll has a fascination with the work of T. S .Eliot and this is the second novel in a proposed set of four, each connected to one of Eliot’s Four Quartets.
The kernel of this novel is the possible inspiration for the lines in Eliot’s Little Gidding:
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Eliot was a fire watcher during the ...more

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Dec 10, 2014 Amy Heap rated it really liked it

Shelves: australian-fiction, war-stories, historical

London, during WWII, is one of my favourite settings, and I enjoyed the touch of Australia in this novel. It is the story of two people forever changed by events in the war, and how they come to terms with them, or not, the impact of relationships and words. A very thoughtful and hopeful book, beautifully written, if a little repetitive.

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Apr 09, 2016 Gillian Murrell rated it really liked it

An unexpected surprise that i liked this book. After the first third i was ready to give up but as i had to read it for a discussion i persisted and found i was soon entranced by this tragic story. The story is set in the 1941 during WWII when an Australian bomber pilot crashes his plane in London and is the only survivor.

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Jun 04, 2013 Brenda Kittelty rated it it was amazing

There is something exquisite in the way that Steven Carroll puts a bunch of ordinary words together to make a collection of ordinary sentences into a work of quiet grace and beauty. This novella is utterly breathtaking.

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Sep 08, 2014 Therese Spruhan added it

Really enjoyed this book. Was very pacey and a window into the world of London during the second world war.

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Dec 17, 2018 Erin rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, yprl-book-club-2018, australian

Meh. Didn’t care for the story and couldn’t warm to any of the characters.

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Nov 17, 2013 Jenny rated it it was amazing

Shelves: kindle-paperwhite, 2014

Meaghan and Mandy recommended this good read and I'm so glad they did. Set during, and just after the London blitz, it is a love story of the times. Beautifully written in a style that reminded me of a pared back Ian McEwan, I look forward to reading more of this less well known? Australian author. ...more

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Feb 17, 2015 Clemmi rated it it was amazing

I found this book to be incredibly visceral and moving. I loved the restraint of the descriptions of Mr Eliot and really enjoy the repetitive nature of Carroll's writing. ...more

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Apr 15, 2018 Debbie rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is book 2 of the Eliot Quartet, and like book 1 the message of this book is to grab life and live it passionately and fully while you can. Unfortunately for the main characters in this book, that message is learned too late.

This novel is set in London in 1942. Jim is an Australian bomber pilot whose plane crash lands killing all the crew except Jim. The plane explodes shortly after impact leaving Jim with memory loss compounded by being deliberately told lies by those in command. Suffering This is book 2 of the Eliot Quartet, and like book 1 the message of this book is to grab life and live it passionately and fully while you can. Unfortunately for the main characters in this book, that message is learned too late.

This novel is set in London in 1942. Jim is an Australian bomber pilot whose plane crash lands killing all the crew except Jim. The plane explodes shortly after impact leaving Jim with memory loss compounded by being deliberately told lies by those in command. Suffering from PTSD and unable to recall all the events of that last fateful bombing mission, Jim is a hollow man who feels removed from society. He feels as if he is living in a world of other people.

Iris is "engaged" to Frank, who has left for the war. She does not love Frank, but felt unable to say no to him when he asked her to wear his ring and be the person back home that he could write to. Iris doesn't wear Frank's ring and does not imagine the relationship will survive the war, but she is there for Frank to write to.

Iris works for the civil service by day and volunteers as a fire-watcher at night, where she spends one day a week with Mr Thomas Eliot and a couple of other men, watching for fires ignited by falling bombs from the roof of the Bloomsbury Press. One night they see Jim's plane burst out of the clouds with one of its engines on fire and are all mesmerised by the sight.

Jim and Iris meet accidentally one day and there is a connection between them that Iris describes as 'boom' and which pulls Jim out of his depression and back into the life of the world. Neither of them is aware that they have the shared memory of Jim's last fiery flight.

Mr Eliot writes his poem, "Little Gidding" and sends a copy to Iris which arrives the same day that Iris learns that Frank is missing in action. Iris interprets the poem as meaning that she must not waste her life chasing love and feels that Frank has gone missing because she has not been true to him, so she breaks off her relationship with Jim.

T.S. Eliot gives a public reading of his poem and Jim goes along in the hope of encountering Iris. Iris is not there, but a line from the poem unblocks Jim's suppressed memory of the crash and the awfulness and hideousness of the loss of his crewmates and his inability to save one of the gunners trapped in the tail comes flooding back to Jim. Jim cannot cope with the trauma of these memories and the loss of Iris and he walks to the village of Little Gidding where he lies down in the snow and dies.

The effect of Thomas Eliot's poem on the lives of Jim and Iris is monumental. Iris realises that Eliot's view of life is wrong and that life should be lived with brazen happiness if possible and that she should never stop chasing life and love. But this realisation comes too late to save Jim.

Once again, Steven Carroll has given us a beautifully written story with a wonderful evocation of time and place. T.S. Eliot is a very minor character in this book, but his impact on Iris and Jim is huge. There were parts of the story which felt a bit repetitious, where we spent too much time in Iris's head but overall it works really well. ...more

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Nov 20, 2017 Lisa rated it really liked it

Shelves: australia, c21st, series

Egged on by Naomi and Travellin’ Penguin after I read The Lost Life, I decided to continue onto Book 2 of Steven Carroll’s Eliot Quartet instead of reading something else. And I’m glad I did, it’s a wonderful book.
TS Eliot is both a major and a minor character in A World of Other People. His appearances are brief and he is aloof and remote – but his poem ‘Little Gidding’ (from Four Quartets) is more significant than he knows. It is a decade since the events of The Lost Life and now he is a fi Egged on by Naomi and Travellin’ Penguin after I read The Lost Life, I decided to continue onto Book 2 of Steven Carroll’s Eliot Quartet instead of reading something else. And I’m glad I did, it’s a wonderful book.
TS Eliot is both a major and a minor character in A World of Other People. His appearances are brief and he is aloof and remote – but his poem ‘Little Gidding’ (from Four Quartets) is more significant than he knows. It is a decade since the events of The Lost Life and now he is a firewatcher on the roof of Faber and Faber, where he is joined for the nightly vigil by Iris, a young woman with a boring job in the army but who also does her duty by night during the Blitz.
Duty is a key theme in the novel. Iris has been gently manipulated into becoming engaged to a young man called Frank. It’s a sign of the times: he’s a nice young man, but she’s not in love with him. She just didn’t know how to say no when he was about to report for duty and produced the ring. He wants someone to wait for him, to be his girl and to sustain him through danger. She knows that, she knows he might get killed, and she knows the situation is because of the war.

It’s the war. It’s the war doing that. It’s one of those phrases going round. And she doesn’t like it. For she is trained in language and this phrase is sloppy. There’s something wheeled out and mechanical to it. A substitute for thinking. She swears she’ll never use it again. The war may reduce her to using beetroot juice for lipstick when the occasion arises, but she is determined it will not reduce her to cliché. (p.19)

But before Iris knows it she is trapped in the cliché of the eternal triangle. In a park in Bloomsbury, she sees a young pilot sitting still like a statue, and she goes to see if he is alright. Jim is suffering from what we now call PTSD and survivor guilt, after his bomber crashed with the loss of all his crew. And though she’s initially wary of getting involved, and he thinks he is doomed never to rejoin the world of other people, they fall in love.
Carroll is much too good a writer to reduce this to a slushy wartime romance.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/11/21/a... ...more

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Oct 12, 2017 Bruce McNair rated it really liked it

Shelves: ww2, england, romance

A young Australian pilot has been injured as a result of crash-landing his bomber after a raid during the early stages of WW2. All of his crew died, either before or immediately after the landing, and he is knocked out and injured as the plane explodes. Sometime later he encounters a young female writer in a park in central London. What starts off as a shy encounter develops into a love affair. But can it last? Particularly, as she has given a promise to another man who has joined the British Ar ...more

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Apr 13, 2021 Heather Slutzkin rated it really liked it

I tried 'The Time we have Taken' some years ago and found it difficult so haven't tried anything by Carroll since. However this book is clearly the right book for me at the moment as I really enjoyed it. Not much actually happens, but it happens very artfully! I enjoyed the linking in with T S Eliot, and his poetry, and the writing itself is poetic and reflective. The setting is London 1941, and the action is the meeting and 'love at first sight' between Iris and Jim, a downed airman, haunted by ...more

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Sep 04, 2017 Sharon Lee rated it it was ok

I was so excited to read this as I was very interested in the premise of weaving Eliot and his poem Little Gidding into a novel. But I found it a very long thread, very repetitive and too long a bow to draw. The female character was annoying and the love at first sight described over and aver again was tedious. I clearly must have missed the parallels and connections to the poem itself because I just didn't think this was very good. ...more

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Dec 20, 2017 Jane rated it liked it

I must have a special affinity for London during the Blitz as here is another one. This one traces the love affair of Jim, an Australian pilot and Iris, a Londoner who is struggling to become a writer (and who is a bit star struck when she volunteers for fire watch duty on the same rooftop where T. S. Eliot is another volunteer). I really like this book. In the right hands, it would make a wonderful movie.

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Dec 18, 2018 Jane Rose rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 18, 2019 Virginia rated it really liked it

"He is one of those who bring their own dark clouds wherever they go. He keeps them on a string. They are always there, even on the brightest of days. It takes only a chance remark and he tugs their strings, drags them down, and blots out the sun. " ...more

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Sep 16, 2020 Angel Du rated it really liked it · review of another edition

this book tried really hard to be deep and be like omg depressing eliot poetry woe is me. the good news is it succeeded most of the time. the bad news is sometimes it didn't. but it sure was depressing ...more

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Apr 01, 2021 Richardsonb94 rated it really liked it

At first I thought a 3 star book, but changed it to 4. It got to me the more I thought about it. In this one, Eliot was a more passive character than the others and I preferred that role. Clever ending as well.

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Jun 14, 2017 Chloe rated it really liked it

A pleasant surprise. It was a mystery as well as a beautiful poem

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Mar 09, 2020 Frances Pearson rated it did not like it

Very boring read. Did not enjoy it at all. It doesn't flow, there is no eager anticipation from one chapter to the next. The first and last I will read from this author. ...more

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Aug 13, 2015 Vicky rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club, kindle

A lovely story: sweet, sad, but not overly so considering the content. A sweet story of two young people whose lives meet in London during WWII, but they have more in common than either knows. They fall in love, they soon separate, and later find things out they didn't realize.

The characters are strong and interesting

There is some kind of theme or moral about the truth being stranger than fiction. And maybe more real than fiction or at least poetry.

Most of all though, it deals quite interestin ...more

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Oct 10, 2014 Olivia rated it it was ok

I'm just going to come right out and say it. This is far from my favourite book.

The book itself had a great idea behind it, don't get me wrong, but it let itself down in a few aspects.

1- The way it was written. At some points within the book, it was difficult to read, as the sentences were structured oddly. Not only this, but I felt that there wasn't enough description of the characters and settings themselves. I found that a lot of the book was telling of metaphors and sayings, rather than the ...more

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Feb 27, 2015 Jill rated it liked it

During World War II the pilot of a crippled bomber is watched by several London firewatchers as he struggles to land his plane after a bombing raid. He survives the inevitable crash landing but suffers from survivor guilt and remorse. In an amazing coincidence, one of the firewatchers meets him in a London park and they begin a relationship.

This novel frustrated me on many levels: the contrived coincidences of the plot, the literary references which assumed a knowledge of T.S. Elliot and the wri ...more

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May 28, 2015 Calzean rated it it was amazing

Shelves: wwii, culture-england, author-australia, culture-australia, historical-fiction

I thought this book was brilliant. One of the best books I have read for a while.

There is the backdrop of WWII and the futility of death.

There is the impact war has on the mental state of men who have been traumatised.

There is T.S. Eliot and his poem "Little Gidding", his motivation for writing and the question whether the act of writing can remove someone from reality.

There are decisions made which have unintentional outcomes.

There was the role of God during times of War.

There is a tragic love ...more

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Jun 15, 2016 Di rated it it was amazing

Shelves: bookclub, historical

Initially I found Iris, the narrator, a bit spiky. I didn't warm to her at all. The story is set in wartime Britain. Despite the fact that Iris has half heartedly accepted the ring of a serviceman on the night before he leaves for the war, she is open to anything. By night she shares rooftop fire watch duty with none other than TS Eliot. One day, in the park, she meets a young damaged Australian serviceman, Jim. Worlds collide. They are both smitten. But the burning dove emblem on this plane hau ...more

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About Steven Carroll

Steven Carroll

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Steven Carroll is an Australian novelist. He was born in 1949 in Melbourne, Victoria and studied at La Trobe University. He has taught English at secondary school level, and drama at RMIT. He has been Drama Critic for The Sunday Age newspaper in Melbourne.

Steven Carroll is now a full-time writer living in Melbourne with his partner, the writer Fiona Capp, and their son. As of 2019, he also writes ...more