{"product_id":"2026100011295-secondhand-a-bachelors-children-short-stories","title":"A Bachelor's Children: Short Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003eEdition: 1st ed.,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Wear and tear with damage\u003cbr\u003ePages: Yellowed\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: price clipped dj. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the tradition of Australian literary fiction, A Bachelor's Children presents a masterfully crafted collection of short stories that cast a sharp, unflinching eye on the peculiarities of human nature — the lonely, the eccentric, the quietly desperate — rendered with a precision that is both unsettling and deeply compelling. Hal Porter's characters inhabit a world of social performance and private anguish, navigating the tensions between appearance and reality, belonging and isolation, in mid-twentieth-century Australia.\n\nPorter, one of Australia's most distinctively styled prose writers, brings to this collection his signature baroque sensibility — a richly ornate yet controlled voice that transforms the mundane into the extraordinary. His writing chronicles the subtleties of class, identity, and repression with a sardonic wit and an acute observer's eye that drew frequent comparisons to the great British short story masters. A Bachelor's Children stands as essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the full, complex range of Australian literary achievement — and to discover why Porter's work continues to demand rediscovery.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50573252788443,"sku":"2026100011295-SECONDHAND","price":60.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/8301ea04-f626-447c-80e2-5fe1183ee5a2.png?v=1791167873","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100011295-secondhand-a-bachelors-children-short-stories","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}