Review: RURAL DREAMS, Margaret Hickey

• 
  This edition read as an e-book on Libby through my local library
  
• Published: 7 January 2025
• ISBN: 9781761351105
• Imprint: Penguin eBooks
• Pages: 240  

Synopsis (publisher)

From award-winning crime writer Margaret Hickey comes a collection of captivating short stories celebrating the Australian countryside.

Margaret Hickey’s Rural Dreams takes a look at life outside the big smoke, featuring the kind of characters you might expect in the country – as well as some you might not.

A football coach ponders obsession . . . a mouse plague dictates school yard politics . . . a failed playwright asks ‘who gets the farm?’ . . . and a young woman returns to her fire-ravaged town.

People we know. People we grew up with. Some of them might even be us . . .

Funny, heartbreaking and true, Rural Dreams highlights the richness of life on the land and showcases the beauty of lives lived outside city walls.

My Take

This book consists of 18 short stories, of varying lengths, many with shared themes, nearly all connected in some way to Australian life, many related to how the country has a pull for those born there.

Short stories often tell you a little more about what an author thinks about.
These told me that, perhaps unexpectedly, Margaret Hickey and I have had some similar experiences: growing up in a country town where you had to go to the city for further education; the pull of the local team on a Saturday morning, in my case tennis at the end of a long train journey; the travel overseas where enough is enough and all you want to do is be "home". 

The ones that struck me the most were 

• Saturday Morning 
• Fowler's Bay
• The Precipice
• Mind Your Language 
• The Wanderer 

The one where we see the crime fiction writer emerge is The Precipice. That has stuck with me. 

My rating: 4.5

I've also read 

4.7, CUTTER'S END - Mark Ariti #1

4.6, STONE TOWN - Mark Ariti #2

4.5, BROKEN BAY - Mark Ariti #3 

4.8, CREEPER

4.6, AN ILL WIND