The Victoria Principle

An award-winning poet turns storyteller.

In The Victoria Principle, Michael Farrell extends the humour and narrative drive demonstrated in recent collections such as I Love Poetry and Googlecholia to the short story. The collection begins with a writer character trying to do literary justice to the fear of birds; other stories feature creative activity, such as the conceptual artist who deliberately boils an egg to Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, or the would-be writers who attend a nude retreat in Nova Scotia. There is pathos, too, in a storyteller’s relationship with his sister, and in that of a gay doctor with a straight Italian waiter, who is trying to make ends meet while supporting two children with two different women. The stories also revisit classical and popular myths, such as the judgement of Paris, and the life of Andy Gibb. The associations brought into play can be unexpected or absurd, but the process has its own logic: we may think of these fictions as meta-fictions, as ‘thought stories’ rather than short stories, offering inflections and reflections on queer Catholicism and mental breakdown, amidst the ongoing contradictions and ironies of contemporary Australian life.

One of the most original and compelling collections of short works I have ever come across. The writing is fluid, poetic and enthralling. It is both easy and challenging to read and begs to be re-read.
Erich Mayer, ArtsHub  (5 star review)

Farrell’s structures are intentionally warped and disproportionate, reminiscent of the ‘irregularity’ and ‘sense of imbalance’ that Gerald Murnane, in his Last Letter to a Reader (2021), has observed in his own self-reflexive short fiction… While [Farrell’s] gestures often implicitly register loneliness and dislocation, they also speak to an abiding sense of curiosity, a longing for more meaningful connections, and the unique power of art to probe and explore.
Morgan Nunan, Australian Book Review  

Wordplay, pop-infused irony, surreal puns, and lots of kitsch are in play throughout the collection which lives up to Farrell’s trickster reputation… It makes for consistently entertaining, and often challenging reading that encourages uncertainty.
Magdalena Ball, The Compulsive Reader

Praise for Michael Farrell:

Farrell recombines Australian ecology, history, and mythology into glorious, and very funky, new forms.
Judges’ citation, Judith Calanthe Wright Award

The playfulness is thoughtful, intellectually serious and absolute… Farrell’s fractured narratives seem to settle in the reader’s mind where they become a form of pure lyricism.
Judges’ citation, Barrett Reid Prize

Farrell brilliantly deforms Australian (literary) history into surreal comedy.
Australian Book Review

Endless, rascally contortions. Read them boldly as an archaeologist…but stay quietly aware that the texts are already affecting your cognitive frame, turning you into their accomplice in the renewing of language.
Sydney Review of Books