Description
A brilliant, critically acclaimed collection of short stories about love and what it means to be loved, by the bestselling, award-winning author of Leaning Towards Infinity, Painted Woman and The Secret Cure
'Elegant and satisfying, and so percipient of human yearning and loss.' Tom Keneally
Written in sparkling, nuanced prose, the stories in Do You Love Me or What? by one of Australia's most celebrated and beloved writers capture the poignant shared experiences of connection, devotion, obsession and rejection.
A woman risks everything for a dangerous friendship. Shyness brings two people together and then shyness breaks them apart. A daughter tries to understand why her father abandoned her, and a vengeful lover chooses between a lie and compassion. Someone yearning for a way to belong learns to look in muddy waters, and a blinded dancer sees through her demons at last. A pilgrim seeking transformation in Florence finally realises how to live, and a girl finds a way to overcome her trauma - but a critic tries to maul her after death,
Sharply knowing, wryly humorous and achingly sad, Do You Love Me or What? speaks to the everyday truths of what it means to love, and be loved.
Praise for Do You Love Me or What?
'A first rate collection' Peter Pierce, Sydney Morning Herald
'Beautiful prose and remarkable wisdom' The Saturday Paper
'Wonderfully supple and luminous: like poetry, the stories can be read again and again for subtly shifting nuance' Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser
'Woolfe takes up the measure of life in a single line' Thuy On, Weekend Australian
'These stories are so achingly intimate, so immediately known, so emotionally satisfying and moving, and written in such luminously simple prose that it's impossible not to be enthralled at once and lost for hours in the joy of reading.' - Alex Miller
'A beautifully crafted journey through the complex chambers of the human heart.' - Patti Miller
'Something recognisable stirs the reader from the very first lines, often something awkward and always something real, carrying the reader into the depths of lives that accost us with their neediness or their curiosity or their long held dreams.These are stories that engage as they cleverly unfold important questions about love and friendship and the vulnerability of most of us, in the rush and tumble of an implacable world.' - Libby Hathorn
'Lyrical, delicate and poignant, these stories shine a light on the lives of damaged people striving to find their way in the world.' Kate Forsyth
Promotion info
Do You Love Me or What? is a collection of eight sparkling, nuanced short stories from one of Australia’s most celebrated and loved writers. Written in elegant, shimmering prose, Sue’s stories are woven with themes encompassing love, loss and yearning, memory and identity, the desert and water, and people who live on the periphery of society. Her sentences are spare and evocative, yet paint fully realised pictures that speak of the poignant, shared experiences of the nature of relationships, past and present.
Author description
Sue Woolfe has worked as a lecturer, TV subtitle editor, documentary maker and cook. She is the author of the bestselling novel about mathematics and motherhood, Leaning Towards Infinity, to date published in five countries and described the Baltimore Sun as ‘the deepest novel of ideas in years’, and by Fay Weldon as ‘glorious’. It won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in 1996 and was shortlisted for many other prizes, including the Commonwealth Prize and the prestigious US TipTree Prize. She re-wrote it for the stage, and it’s been workshopped in New York and produced at the Ensemble, Sydney.
