A Second Life by Stephen Wright

A Second Life by Stephen Wright

In a tiny book-lined office backing onto a supermarket in a small town in northern New South Wales, a woman named Acker sits smoking a cigarette and listening to the music of Philip Glass. Others come to her with their stories of violence and pain and through her writing she attempts to salvage what they have lost. A Second Life immerses the reader in a world that is both familiar and forbidding. It unfolds with horror and beauty to reveal a complicated and unforgettable portrait of a woman who moves through this world carrying secret histories, different ways of seeing, and many stories.
With a narrative voice that is at once eerily beautiful and slightly wild, and a premise that is surreal and ambitious, A Second Life stood out to me immediately. It's an exploration of the self and life and death, all of which comprise the psychological fabric of the main character, who occupies many selves and sometimes none at all.

Stephen Wright is a Widjabul resident. His pieces have won the Eureka St Prize, the Nature Conservancy Prize, the Overland NUW Fair Australia Prize (twice), and the Scarlett Award, among others, and have been shortlisted for several others. Stephen works part-time as the manager of a NSW non-profit that provides men's behavior change programs for men who use violence in the household, as well as a counsellor who provides long-term psychotherapy to women and men who have endured childhood violence and abuse. Little Owl will publish Stephen's nonfiction novella A Lantern, Brought Down a Dark Road.