Ordinary Matter

(Paperback)

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Inspired by the twenty times women have won Nobel Prizes for science, this short-story collection from award-winning author Laura Elvery is a dazzling, thought-provoking follow-up to Trick of the Light. In 1895 Alfred Nobel rewrote his will and left his fortune made in dynamite and munitions to generations of thinkers. Since 1901 women have been honoured with Nobel Prizes for their scientific research twenty times, including Marie Curie twice. Spanning more than a century and ranging across the world, this inventive story collection is inspired by these women whose work has altered history and saved millions of lives. From a transformative visit to the Grand Canyon to a baby washing up on a Queensland beach, a climate protest during a Paris heatwave to Stockholm on the eve of the 1977 Nobel Prize ceremony, these stories interrogate the nature of inspiration and discovery, motherhood and sacrifice, illness and legacy. Sometimes the extraordinary pivots on the ordinary.

Reviews

'Ordinary Matter is not what it says on the tin, it's better. Fully charged and slightly unstable; an element with surplus electrons, ready to jump.' --The Age

'Ordinary Matter is, in the best sense, a surprising collection: intellectually ambitious; offering unexpected digressions and deliberately odd conjunctions ... This engaging and unusual collection will consolidate Elvery's reputation as a writer of fine short stories.' --Australian Book Review

'Elvery's stories are luminescent, sensitive and insightful.' --Books + Publishing

'For fans of Elvery's debut collection, A Trick of the Light (UQP), Ceridwen Dovey's short stories, and anyone seeking literary fiction that challenges what it could mean to have a vision of a better world.' --Kill Your Darlings

'In their sheer variousness and imaginative verve, [these stories] kick science out of the laboratory and into a broader, messier human milieu.' --The Saturday Paper

'In this book, Elvery cements her reputation as an author with a strong command of language, style, and suspense, while also paying tribute to women trailblazers in the field of science.' --ArtsHub

'Laura Elvery has merged art and science with a clever twist.' --Readings

'Reading each one, followed the corresponding Author Notes at the back of the book, reveals Elvery's incredible craftsmanship, attention to detail and originality.' --Better Read Than Dead

'The construction of a polished collection of stories, of tonally varied fictions told in surprising ways, is quite an achievement.' --The Australian

'What is clear from reading Ordinary Matter is that Laura Elvery is a writer whose talents are anything but ordinary.' --The AU Review

Author Bio

Laura Elvery's work has been published in Meanjin, Overland, The Big Issue fiction edition and Griffith Review. She has won the Josephine Ulrick Prize for Literature, the Margaret River Short Story Competition, the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, and the Overland Fair Australia short story prize. Laura has a PhD in Creative Writing. She lives in Brisbane.