The End of the World

Short story collection

Published by University of Queensland Press, April 2007

Cover
A sparkling collection of award-winning short stories. Stylistically varied and enlivened by a wry, dark humour, this collection shows Paddy O’Reilly living up to the promise shown in her debut novel, The Factory.
With subtlety and assurance, O’Reilly creates narrative voices and situations spanning a broad range of experience – an alien visitor who communicates in the language of romance, a woman waiting for her death, a case of confused identity, and the sour taste of relationships lost or abandoned. O’Reilly’s characters are at once defiant and accepting, curious and bewildered. From Japan to suburban Australia, and onto a place where larger, odder things are possible, The End of the World plays with our perceptions of reality.

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Selected by reviewers as one of the best books of 2007 in publications including ABR (Australian Book Review), The Financial Review, Overland, The Adelaide Review and The Adelaide Advertiser

Reviews

"The End of the World is an excellent collection: formally adventurous, sharp-witted and beautifully crafted. Even the minor pieces are written with polish and aplomb. The stories embrace a range of styles, from realism to offbeat science fiction, but this diversity is matched by a thematic coherence... She has hit on a tragicomic style all her own, with a distinctive capacity to detect the underlying pathos in her characters' acerbic observations and self-deprecating humour."
Australian Literary Review

"Each O'Reilly story winks and coruscates with flashes of intelligence and humour, insight and empathy... The End of the World is fresh on every page, adventurous, enlightening, nicely restrained yet vivid and often moving. If you haven't read short stories in a while, regain your taste for the genre under the tutelage of O'Reilly."
The Australian (link to full review)

"The End of the World is a collection of those [prize-winning] stories and should secure [O'Reilly's] reputation as one of our most interesting, if not best-known, literary talents. ... she is very funny and she has some surprising things to say about love, language and the stories we tell ourselves. ... She is an observant, lucid, unpredictable writer, and she deserves to be more widely read."
 Australian Book Review

"These are exceptional stories, full of imaginative and evocative portraits of all sorts of people...These stories are biting, funny and sad. They slice through pretence and sentimentality between family members, friends and lovers, and leave few illusions intact. Nevertheless, O'Reilly's vision is not cynical, and her characters are remarkably memorable... The magnificent giantess in 'FutureGirl', realising she is doomed to a painful early death by her size, and the devastated teenager abandoned by her middle-aged lover in 'Fluid'- these are feats of the imagination which lift the stories in this collection above the ordinary."
The Adelaide Review (link to full review)

"At first glance, there might seem little to connect these disparate stories but gradually the pieces, often little more than shards, begin to coalesce, marking out a picture of a world where chaos is never less than a heartbeat away and where the borders of reality are more fluid than we think. ... Read one beside the other, [the stories] mark out the emotional and imaginative landscape of a writer of real flair"
Sydney Morning Herald

The follow-up to Paddy O’Reilly’s debut novel, The Factory (2005), The End of the World is a collection of the stories that have won her accolades including The Age short story competition and the Zoetrope: All-Story short fiction contest. It is immediately clear why O’Reilly has been so applauded and well published: She hops across genre lines in a mixture of different styles and voice, but always writes with pathos and empathy, without sentimentality, and with a good dose of humor.
New Haven Review (link to full review)

"With an assured, unadorned style she delivers 18 gems in The End of the World, each of which gives you the vivid sense you've just become deeply acquainted with a complete stranger. O'Reilly's delightful and deranged characters inspire a combination of delicious amusement, aching sorrow and quirky surprise. ...utterly and brilliantly believable."
The Big Issue

"...a brilliant contemporary writer whose stories at times evoke such a warm sense of homeliness and yesteryear, and at other times offer a perceptive comment or two on life. Paddy O’Reilly’s collection constantly drifts between good and great, but you are never left lamenting. Her style, her imagery and metaphor are a pleasure to read. The originality of her storytelling and the devices she uses are sometimes quirky (such as little aliens that eat wheatgrass) but always succeed..." Five stars
Bookseller and Publisher

This is a deeply satisfying collection, beautiful writing, original and often painful stories that don't shy away from violence or tragedy, and characters that linger long after the book has been put down.
The Short Review (link to full review)