Friends & Dark Shapes

An exquisite examination of the contours of grief and contemporary life, from a fresh new Australian-Indian voice.

A group of friends moves into a share house in Redfern. They are all on the cusp of thirty and big life changes, navigating insecure employment and housing, second-generation identity, online dating and social alienation-and one of them, our narrator, has just lost her father.

How do you inhabit a space where the landscape is shifting around you, when your sense of self is unravelling? What meaning does time have in the midst of grief?

Through emotionally rich vignettes tinged with humour, Friends & Dark Shapes sketches the contours of contemporary life. It is a novel of love and loss, of constancy and change. Most of all, it is about looking for connection in an estranged world.

'An astonishingly assured debut, full of razor-sharp observations about what it means to live precariously in a changing city. It's hard to believe this is Bedford's first novel. Her voice is already fully formed.' Jenny Offill

'Such a vivid geography: this is a work of smart intensities, witty sorrow and wise coming-to-terms with grief. Astute, wry and beautifully tender.' Gail Jones

'Reminiscent of Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy...An intricately observed mosaic that comes together to represent a multi-faceted story of a Sydney that is forever evolving, in ways both positive and destructive.' InDaily

'Bedford is a talented writer with a wonderful eye for detail, and her crisp, measured sentences are genuinely impressive. After grief, alienation and loneliness suffuse the novel, the story earns its way toward a sense of hope.' New York Times