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What Came Between
Set against the backdrop of the 1989 earthquake that shook Newcastle, Australia, this gripping novel reveals another set of intangible but powerful fault lines—those that exist in the relationships of three couples who reside in adjoining terraces on Laman Street. Revealing the potential they have to change each other’s lives irreparably, this tale follows these six characters as they struggle to discover new ways of negotiating marriage and infidelity, careers and unemployment, and friendship and loss. Beginning with their hard-earned knowledge of how to survive one day at a time, this narrative then touches on the protagonists a decade later, when they realize how to live as if each night were their last. Written in spare prose, this chronicle takes ordinary lives and transforms them into something both familiar and extraordinary, creating a compelling portrait of contemporary living.
- GenresShort Stories
192 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2009
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13 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Cullen
2booksPatrick Cullen’s short stories have been published in journals, anthologies and newspapers, broadcast on national radio, and adapted for the stage.
Seven previously published stories were included in What Came Between (2009), which was written as part of a PhD at the University of Newcastle. Three stories from the collection were published in The Best Australian Stories 2005 , and others in The Best Australian Stories 2006 and The Best Australian Stories 2007 .
In 2014, Patrick was awarded a New Work grant by the Australia Council for Untold Stories, an as yet unpublished collection of experimental stories that combine well-known facts, lesser-known facts, little white lies and outright pork pies. Published stories from the collection feature filmmakers (Krzysztof Kieslowski and the Coen Brothers) and writers (Raymond Carver, Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff; Raymond Carver and Haruki Murakami; John Cheever; and Ernest Hemingway).
A play, The Closest Shave, adapted from an unpublished short story (which was itself an adaptation of an unproduced short film), was performed at The Playhouse, Civic Theatre, Newcastle as part of the 2011 Short & Sweet Festival.
Seven previously published stories were included in What Came Between (2009), which was written as part of a PhD at the University of Newcastle. Three stories from the collection were published in The Best Australian Stories 2005 , and others in The Best Australian Stories 2006 and The Best Australian Stories 2007 .
In 2014, Patrick was awarded a New Work grant by the Australia Council for Untold Stories, an as yet unpublished collection of experimental stories that combine well-known facts, lesser-known facts, little white lies and outright pork pies. Published stories from the collection feature filmmakers (Krzysztof Kieslowski and the Coen Brothers) and writers (Raymond Carver, Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff; Raymond Carver and Haruki Murakami; John Cheever; and Ernest Hemingway).
A play, The Closest Shave, adapted from an unpublished short story (which was itself an adaptation of an unproduced short film), was performed at The Playhouse, Civic Theatre, Newcastle as part of the 2011 Short & Sweet Festival.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 6, 2021
The style of this book felt basic and simplistic making it difficult to emotionally connect with the characters. The back of the book describes this writing style as spare prose, guess it's not for me
May 15, 2013
In 2008 at the 10th International Short Story Conference in Cork, Ireland, Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler commented in a workshop on an exercise in which one of the students had transformed a panty hose into an instrument of yearning. That was my first encounter with the writing of Patrick Cullen.
I soon discovered that in addition to stories in The Age, Sleepers Almanac, Harvest and The Best Australian Stories 2007 (BAS07) edited by Robert Drewe, three of Cullen´s stories appeared as a ‘triptych� in The Best Australian Stories 2005 (BAS05) edited by Frank Moorhouse. In a triptych, the left and right panels are subordinate to the centre one and so it also would seem to be with the stories “Mauve�, “Collapsing Under Their Own Weight� and “‘And?’� which all appear in amended forms (as does “The Easy Way Out� from BAS07) in Cullen´s story collection, What Came Between, published by Scribe Publications in August 2009. But in this collection of twelve linked stories, the central story of the triptych from BAS05, has been developed into a more complex one and appears as “Scar Tissue�, which for me represents the epiphany of the book. Although the stories can be read as stand-alones, when read in sequence they take on a hypertextual quality - a burrowing into layers which grounds the almost novelesque collection in the terrace houses of Laman Street, Newcastle, where the lives of neighbours interlink like cogwheels quietly ticking along from the 1989 Newcastle earthquake to the shutdown of the local steelworks a decade later, and beyond.
The first two stories, “Aftershocks� and “The Ground Beneath�, set the tone as the fault lines of the Newcastle earthquake expose the lives and longing of the inhabitants of Laman Street: the childless couple, Sarah and Paul, their neighbours, Ray and Pam, and the elderly Elsie. In “The Long Drive Home�, Elsie, learns to drive her grandson, Lucas´, car and, as in a relay, hands over her house to him. Then we segue into “And?� and the secrets Paul never divulged to his wife.
The next story, “The Comet�, describes how Lucas and Cate, a girl fleetingly mentioned in “The Long Drive Home�, get to know each other through the interweaving of Halley´s Comet, Huckleberry Finn and Mark Twain, before we are drawn on to “Mauve� in which Paul struggles with his career perceptions and the need to write as a way to express his feelings to Sarah. Although there are allusions to books and authors—Love in the Time of Cholera in “Scar Tissue� and Huckleberry Finn in “The Comet”—in “Mauve� the references to Paul, the writer of stories and poems, seem to fit better with the stand-alone “Mauve� than the “Mauve� of the story collection perhaps simply because there is no record of Paul ever writing again. Or will that be a part of the future?
In the middle of the collection the story “Dust� forms a natural marker for the following decade with the death of Geoffrey, a friend of Pam and Ray from their time before Laman Street: Pam and Ray are now parents, but Geoffrey´s death takes Pam back twenty years to when Geoffrey's then pregnant wife, Judy, confessed to Pam her infidelity. It is as though room for thought is provided to the reader before the next story, “The Easy Way Out� in which Pam encourages Ray to reconnect with their estranged son, Michael. At the same time, it would seem, in the story “Where Things Belong�, Lucas and Cate face impending parenthood and the enigmatic discovery of a child´s shoe in the ceiling. Then comes the brave and sensitive “Scar Tissue� where Sarah, standing naked in the surf displays her absent breast to the gaze of a passing stranger: “She hesitated for a moment then let her arms fall to her sides. � ‘Good morning,� she said and laughed.� This sets the bitter-sweet tone for the last two stories: “Short of Breath, Full of Ache� where Michael discovers a new facet of his father Ray, and “The Birth of Unknowing� in which the birth of Cate and Lucas´ child indicates a certain hope for the future.
In simple prose Cullen describes the failings and victories of ordinary people with sensitivity and knowing that make the stories of this collection resonate. Robert Olen Butler, who on the back cover of the book speaks of the collection´s “vision of how we seek our deepest selves in the crush of the quotidian� also no doubt perceived in these stories a narrator who “yearns to face the dark things honestly.�
Needless to say, I enjoyed this collection and am curious as to the fate of the panty hose.
I soon discovered that in addition to stories in The Age, Sleepers Almanac, Harvest and The Best Australian Stories 2007 (BAS07) edited by Robert Drewe, three of Cullen´s stories appeared as a ‘triptych� in The Best Australian Stories 2005 (BAS05) edited by Frank Moorhouse. In a triptych, the left and right panels are subordinate to the centre one and so it also would seem to be with the stories “Mauve�, “Collapsing Under Their Own Weight� and “‘And?’� which all appear in amended forms (as does “The Easy Way Out� from BAS07) in Cullen´s story collection, What Came Between, published by Scribe Publications in August 2009. But in this collection of twelve linked stories, the central story of the triptych from BAS05, has been developed into a more complex one and appears as “Scar Tissue�, which for me represents the epiphany of the book. Although the stories can be read as stand-alones, when read in sequence they take on a hypertextual quality - a burrowing into layers which grounds the almost novelesque collection in the terrace houses of Laman Street, Newcastle, where the lives of neighbours interlink like cogwheels quietly ticking along from the 1989 Newcastle earthquake to the shutdown of the local steelworks a decade later, and beyond.
The first two stories, “Aftershocks� and “The Ground Beneath�, set the tone as the fault lines of the Newcastle earthquake expose the lives and longing of the inhabitants of Laman Street: the childless couple, Sarah and Paul, their neighbours, Ray and Pam, and the elderly Elsie. In “The Long Drive Home�, Elsie, learns to drive her grandson, Lucas´, car and, as in a relay, hands over her house to him. Then we segue into “And?� and the secrets Paul never divulged to his wife.
The next story, “The Comet�, describes how Lucas and Cate, a girl fleetingly mentioned in “The Long Drive Home�, get to know each other through the interweaving of Halley´s Comet, Huckleberry Finn and Mark Twain, before we are drawn on to “Mauve� in which Paul struggles with his career perceptions and the need to write as a way to express his feelings to Sarah. Although there are allusions to books and authors—Love in the Time of Cholera in “Scar Tissue� and Huckleberry Finn in “The Comet”—in “Mauve� the references to Paul, the writer of stories and poems, seem to fit better with the stand-alone “Mauve� than the “Mauve� of the story collection perhaps simply because there is no record of Paul ever writing again. Or will that be a part of the future?
In the middle of the collection the story “Dust� forms a natural marker for the following decade with the death of Geoffrey, a friend of Pam and Ray from their time before Laman Street: Pam and Ray are now parents, but Geoffrey´s death takes Pam back twenty years to when Geoffrey's then pregnant wife, Judy, confessed to Pam her infidelity. It is as though room for thought is provided to the reader before the next story, “The Easy Way Out� in which Pam encourages Ray to reconnect with their estranged son, Michael. At the same time, it would seem, in the story “Where Things Belong�, Lucas and Cate face impending parenthood and the enigmatic discovery of a child´s shoe in the ceiling. Then comes the brave and sensitive “Scar Tissue� where Sarah, standing naked in the surf displays her absent breast to the gaze of a passing stranger: “She hesitated for a moment then let her arms fall to her sides. � ‘Good morning,� she said and laughed.� This sets the bitter-sweet tone for the last two stories: “Short of Breath, Full of Ache� where Michael discovers a new facet of his father Ray, and “The Birth of Unknowing� in which the birth of Cate and Lucas´ child indicates a certain hope for the future.
In simple prose Cullen describes the failings and victories of ordinary people with sensitivity and knowing that make the stories of this collection resonate. Robert Olen Butler, who on the back cover of the book speaks of the collection´s “vision of how we seek our deepest selves in the crush of the quotidian� also no doubt perceived in these stories a narrator who “yearns to face the dark things honestly.�
Needless to say, I enjoyed this collection and am curious as to the fate of the panty hose.
Read
August 20, 2009There’s a delicate and quiet power in Patrick Cullen’s stories. As the title suggests, What Came Between focuses on the ten years between the 1989 Newcastle Earthquake and the Newcastle BHP Steelwork’s closure in 1999. They’re the major events that bracket this work, providing context, setting and external pressure, but this is a novel driven by character development rather than major events. The book’s title also refers to what came between one part of Laman Street and the other � the small scale place of the novel. Small in focus maybe � these people are neighbours and their lives intersect in passing moments - but the broader scale is the range of human emotion that Cullen delves into. The novel takes the form of a series of twelve interconnected stories, all of which could stand alone. Indeed, a number of the stories were published in the Frank Moorhouse edited The Best Australian Stories as standalone pieces, and I was pleased to revisit them here. Taken as a group, the stories work seamlessly together, creating a web of interwoven lives, where a glimpse of an incidental character in one story becomes a complete story and main protagonist in another. Cullen rarely tells the reader what the characters are feeling or even what is happening. Instead, it is subtly inferred through spare dialogue, quiet activity, or almost imperceptible action.
There are three main couples around whom the work pivots, all living on Laman Street in Newcastle, NSW. There is Sarah and her husband Paul. There is middle-aged Ray and Pam, and there is the young Cate and Lucas. The couples live near one another and have small links between them: they pass each other, take tea together, or glimpse bits of one anothers' lives from the outside. Within each unit however, there are big things happening. There are job losses and suicides, miscarriages, Cancer, familial relationship struggles, infidelity, and a wonderfully detailed birth. Amidst it all is the lovingly depicted city of Newcastle, which functions as a character too. The ocean, Anne Von Bertouch’s gallery, the city centre, the old houses and units, and fauna are all present and richly presented. Almost more important than the major transitions in these lives are the impact of day to day living � the dust that fills the pores; the washing of clothing; the purchasing of art. What makes this work distinctive is the intensity of the narrative gaze. We learn about the characters through an almost anthropomorphic rendering of the natural world they observe. This, for example, is Luke, crossing a creek as he takes a break en route to Denman with his grandmother:
The surface of the water was dark, reflective. A white-faced heron raised on thin leg and eased slowly forward narrowing its gaze at something beneatah the surface. It made a slow augering movement with its head and then, startled, uttered a sharp guttural sound and raised its narrow beak as a dozen rosellas crashed in thte she-oaks overhead. The rosellas wved like flags fom the thin branches, chattering to each other in a low electric crackle as they ground away at the oaks� small cones. (43)
As the stories progress, we watch the characters struggle with the same things that we all struggle with � the large and small crises that make up ordinary lives, and a greater sense of the strength and weaknesses of humanity is revealed. What Came Between is a light-handed and tender depiction of a microcosm of life that illuminates the nature of humanity as a whole. Though these are completely ordinary, middle-class characters leading lives that we might be leading or our neighbours might be leading, they are people we won’t soon forget.
There are three main couples around whom the work pivots, all living on Laman Street in Newcastle, NSW. There is Sarah and her husband Paul. There is middle-aged Ray and Pam, and there is the young Cate and Lucas. The couples live near one another and have small links between them: they pass each other, take tea together, or glimpse bits of one anothers' lives from the outside. Within each unit however, there are big things happening. There are job losses and suicides, miscarriages, Cancer, familial relationship struggles, infidelity, and a wonderfully detailed birth. Amidst it all is the lovingly depicted city of Newcastle, which functions as a character too. The ocean, Anne Von Bertouch’s gallery, the city centre, the old houses and units, and fauna are all present and richly presented. Almost more important than the major transitions in these lives are the impact of day to day living � the dust that fills the pores; the washing of clothing; the purchasing of art. What makes this work distinctive is the intensity of the narrative gaze. We learn about the characters through an almost anthropomorphic rendering of the natural world they observe. This, for example, is Luke, crossing a creek as he takes a break en route to Denman with his grandmother:
The surface of the water was dark, reflective. A white-faced heron raised on thin leg and eased slowly forward narrowing its gaze at something beneatah the surface. It made a slow augering movement with its head and then, startled, uttered a sharp guttural sound and raised its narrow beak as a dozen rosellas crashed in thte she-oaks overhead. The rosellas wved like flags fom the thin branches, chattering to each other in a low electric crackle as they ground away at the oaks� small cones. (43)
As the stories progress, we watch the characters struggle with the same things that we all struggle with � the large and small crises that make up ordinary lives, and a greater sense of the strength and weaknesses of humanity is revealed. What Came Between is a light-handed and tender depiction of a microcosm of life that illuminates the nature of humanity as a whole. Though these are completely ordinary, middle-class characters leading lives that we might be leading or our neighbours might be leading, they are people we won’t soon forget.
September 21, 2009
This book is (among other things)an evocation of a particular period in Newcastle's history. I really enjoyed reading about a place where I know quite well - Laman Street, the breakwall, the beach and the harbour. The author's conrolled and simple prose was quite mesmerising but my only criticism is I would have liked one of the couples to have yelled at each other. Just one out of the three would have been good because I really don't believe the majority of us are all so restrained in their emotions as Pam and Ray, Cate and Lucas AND Paul and Sarah. With that said I would like to add the ending was wonderful.
August 9, 2010
A slow gentle tale of neighbours in Newcastle, set against the backdrop of the 88 earthquake. I loved Patrick's resonating thoughts. Made me miss my old stomping ground. The beaches. Walking down the fig lined streets smelling other peoples dinner wafting out of their houses. If my memory serves me right, Patrick was a big fan of going for walks when he couldn't get the writing flowing. I remember talking to him out of the front of my house one day, and then an idea came to him and he had to scurry off.
October 26, 2020
I read this in one sitting because I needed to know where the characters ended up each in their own lives. Although I think Cullen could have perhaps added a little more depth/layers to his characters, its only beacause he created such genuine ones that I wanted to know more about them. Im sure these people live around me here in Laman St.
April 19, 2015
for the most part I enjoyed this book. it did have the feel of a short story, but that didn't hurt. the writing is exceptional, i could almost smell this little neighbourhood and feel the heat described. wonderful quick read.
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