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The Rip
Internationally acclaimed as a novelist and memoirist, Robert Drewe returns to the short-story territory he has made his own. Set against a backdrop - the Australian coast - as randomly and imminently violent as it is beautiful, The Rip reveals the fragility of relationships between husbands and wives, children and parents, friends and lovers.
You will find yourself set down in a modern Garden of Eden with a disgraced Adam seeking his Eve; sharing the fears of a small boy in a coastal classroom as a tsunami approaches; in an English gaol cell with an Australian surfer on drug charges; watching an American film scout confront his masculinity on a Pacific island; and witnessing a middle-aged farmer contemplating murdering the hippie who stole his wife.
Written in a variety of moods, always compassionate, wry and razor-sharp, these dazzling stories are crafted with all the weight and resonance of Drewe's longer fiction as well as the incisive wit, passion and pathos of his Australian classic, The Bodysurfers.
You will find yourself set down in a modern Garden of Eden with a disgraced Adam seeking his Eve; sharing the fears of a small boy in a coastal classroom as a tsunami approaches; in an English gaol cell with an Australian surfer on drug charges; watching an American film scout confront his masculinity on a Pacific island; and witnessing a middle-aged farmer contemplating murdering the hippie who stole his wife.
Written in a variety of moods, always compassionate, wry and razor-sharp, these dazzling stories are crafted with all the weight and resonance of Drewe's longer fiction as well as the incisive wit, passion and pathos of his Australian classic, The Bodysurfers.
220 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
11 people are currently reading
115 people want to read
About the author
Robert Drewe
60 books81 followersRobert Drewe is among Australia’s most loved writers – of novels, memoir and short stories. His iconic Australian books include The Shark Net, The Bodysurfers and Our Sunshine. He is also editor of Black Inc.’s Best Australian Stories annual series. Recently, he has revisited the short story himself, with a masterful new collection, The Rip. Jo Case spoke to him for Readings about storytelling.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
November 8, 2009
Sorry guys - is there a librarian who can fix to to The Rip by Robert Drewe???
I’ve read a few books by Robert Drewe, in fact, I’ve started at least five. I never got more than 30 pages into The Drowner although I did finish Our Sunshine, even if I thought it was a bit crappy. Our Sunshine came out at about the same time as Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang and was on pretty much the same topic, so it effectively stopped me reading that. Years ago I read Drewe’s short stories called Bodysurfers and I really loved those stories. There was even a television thing made of them and that was also pretty good. But it is years since I read any of those stories and can hardly remember anything of them – except, that is, that I thought they were really very good. I’ve also read The Shark Net and loved that. I read that only about five years ago, so would trust that is still worth reading.
I had decided that he was a writer that was much better at writing short stories – and if you had asked me to recommend anything by him, I would have said, ‘read his short stories, he is particularly good at them.’ So when I read these and found I could hardly drag my way through them I was really very surprised. These are so dreadfully over-written that they are almost clumsy – and the themes are so drab and predictable and the motifs that were in Bodysurfers – architects and artists and the beach and Australians being Australians – that all seemed so fresh and new and different in the 1980s now just seemed like yet another dose of meat and two veg.
And I couldn’t for the life of me work out what he would want to write these stories for. They were just the same as a million other stories that you might find written in a million creative writing courses just about anywhere across the first world. It is not that I wanted them to be more Australian, it is not that there weren’t enough characters wearing Akubra hats and saying, “Nah, mate, Dinkum” and shit like that – it was just that the stories seemed so pointlessly bland. You know, yet another relationship on the rocks, yet another middle-aged, straight-laced farmer getting into a relationship with a woman into feng shui (do you think there is a proper way to say that or is it just random? Is it meant to be shoe-ee or sho-ay?).
I don’t think there was a single character in this entire book of short stories that I could care less about. You know, let’s go through some of them – there is the guy who has somehow lost lots of other people’s money and is living in his house somewhere in the country waiting for his trial and swimming in his pool every day while his wife is in Sydney with the kids – this one was a bit like The Drover’s Wife, even if not quite as good. There is the surfer who is in an English gaol waiting for trial on a drugs smuggling charge and studying creative writing. There is some short-arsed American film studio guy looking for a location to film in Queensland who comes over here and shags our sheilas. There’s a tree change. There are country folk who don’t quite get the strange ways of these city folk who have moved into the neighbourhood. There is some coffee grower whose wife runs off with some guy in a kaftan so that she can finally begin her life’s journey (oh, bloody hell, so many people on journeys, what the hell is this, a book of short stories or a bus depot?) There was even a kid potentially trapped in a tsunami… I couldn’t help feeling that somewhere out there you might be able to find the Penguin Book of Themes for Effective Short Stories and…
But I could almost forgive the endless clichés of the stories, if only the writing hadn’t made me cringe far too frequently. Is ‘eschew’ really a word one ought to use in a short story – I mean, a word one can use with a straight face? Is it ever a good thing to say, “Look mum, no hands” about learning to ride a bike in any piece of fiction of any description ever?
Like I said, I really liked Bodysurfers – but I read it a very long time ago and I will avoid reading it again now, just in case the memory is better than the reality. Oh, the other thing about Bodysurfers is that painting on the cover – that sort of Nazi-Australian Beach Art that both sums up what is so appealing about the Australian beach and what is so disgusting about it. That was how I remembered Bodysurfers, all fit and lovely on the surface, but not so nice underneath. The problems I’ve had with this one is perhaps best summed up by what was easily the worst story in the book, Beach Man – Bush Woman. He is in love with the beach, she with the bush, he is in advertising, she is an academic, she makes a fool of him in front of her work colleagues, he worries she doesn’t love him anymore. She buys him a canoe and he thinks she is watching him as he rows out to the sandbar. But she isn’t watching as he finds out when he looks back at the house, which he suddenly notices is run down and surrounded by the bush and he is alone in his canoe surrounded by the beach, and, and – spare me…
This book has received rave reviews from people much more aware of the joys of Australian fiction than I am. I thought it tried far too hard and begged too much for my interest and then struggled to be clear and I couldn’t help feeling this seemed to be a symptom of the author not really having anything he actually needed to say. He clearly had things he wanted to say, but nothing he needed to say, nothing at all.
I’ve read a few books by Robert Drewe, in fact, I’ve started at least five. I never got more than 30 pages into The Drowner although I did finish Our Sunshine, even if I thought it was a bit crappy. Our Sunshine came out at about the same time as Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang and was on pretty much the same topic, so it effectively stopped me reading that. Years ago I read Drewe’s short stories called Bodysurfers and I really loved those stories. There was even a television thing made of them and that was also pretty good. But it is years since I read any of those stories and can hardly remember anything of them – except, that is, that I thought they were really very good. I’ve also read The Shark Net and loved that. I read that only about five years ago, so would trust that is still worth reading.
I had decided that he was a writer that was much better at writing short stories – and if you had asked me to recommend anything by him, I would have said, ‘read his short stories, he is particularly good at them.’ So when I read these and found I could hardly drag my way through them I was really very surprised. These are so dreadfully over-written that they are almost clumsy – and the themes are so drab and predictable and the motifs that were in Bodysurfers – architects and artists and the beach and Australians being Australians – that all seemed so fresh and new and different in the 1980s now just seemed like yet another dose of meat and two veg.
And I couldn’t for the life of me work out what he would want to write these stories for. They were just the same as a million other stories that you might find written in a million creative writing courses just about anywhere across the first world. It is not that I wanted them to be more Australian, it is not that there weren’t enough characters wearing Akubra hats and saying, “Nah, mate, Dinkum” and shit like that – it was just that the stories seemed so pointlessly bland. You know, yet another relationship on the rocks, yet another middle-aged, straight-laced farmer getting into a relationship with a woman into feng shui (do you think there is a proper way to say that or is it just random? Is it meant to be shoe-ee or sho-ay?).
I don’t think there was a single character in this entire book of short stories that I could care less about. You know, let’s go through some of them – there is the guy who has somehow lost lots of other people’s money and is living in his house somewhere in the country waiting for his trial and swimming in his pool every day while his wife is in Sydney with the kids – this one was a bit like The Drover’s Wife, even if not quite as good. There is the surfer who is in an English gaol waiting for trial on a drugs smuggling charge and studying creative writing. There is some short-arsed American film studio guy looking for a location to film in Queensland who comes over here and shags our sheilas. There’s a tree change. There are country folk who don’t quite get the strange ways of these city folk who have moved into the neighbourhood. There is some coffee grower whose wife runs off with some guy in a kaftan so that she can finally begin her life’s journey (oh, bloody hell, so many people on journeys, what the hell is this, a book of short stories or a bus depot?) There was even a kid potentially trapped in a tsunami… I couldn’t help feeling that somewhere out there you might be able to find the Penguin Book of Themes for Effective Short Stories and…
But I could almost forgive the endless clichés of the stories, if only the writing hadn’t made me cringe far too frequently. Is ‘eschew’ really a word one ought to use in a short story – I mean, a word one can use with a straight face? Is it ever a good thing to say, “Look mum, no hands” about learning to ride a bike in any piece of fiction of any description ever?
Like I said, I really liked Bodysurfers – but I read it a very long time ago and I will avoid reading it again now, just in case the memory is better than the reality. Oh, the other thing about Bodysurfers is that painting on the cover – that sort of Nazi-Australian Beach Art that both sums up what is so appealing about the Australian beach and what is so disgusting about it. That was how I remembered Bodysurfers, all fit and lovely on the surface, but not so nice underneath. The problems I’ve had with this one is perhaps best summed up by what was easily the worst story in the book, Beach Man – Bush Woman. He is in love with the beach, she with the bush, he is in advertising, she is an academic, she makes a fool of him in front of her work colleagues, he worries she doesn’t love him anymore. She buys him a canoe and he thinks she is watching him as he rows out to the sandbar. But she isn’t watching as he finds out when he looks back at the house, which he suddenly notices is run down and surrounded by the bush and he is alone in his canoe surrounded by the beach, and, and – spare me…
This book has received rave reviews from people much more aware of the joys of Australian fiction than I am. I thought it tried far too hard and begged too much for my interest and then struggled to be clear and I couldn’t help feeling this seemed to be a symptom of the author not really having anything he actually needed to say. He clearly had things he wanted to say, but nothing he needed to say, nothing at all.
October 30, 2023
problems of a middle aged man
September 14, 2022
he Rip by Robert Drewe is a beautiful collection of short stories set on the coast of Australia that looks at lives and relationships and how they can change in an instant through unexpected and sometimes dramatic events.
There are thirteen stories in The Rip and at the centre is the ocean, soothing and comforting, but in an instant, tempestuous and unforgiving; not unlike our bonds with our friends and loved ones.
In The Rip, Robert Drewe has us laughing at our ridiculousness, cringing at our desperation and saddened by the harsh cruelties of life; all the time with the underlying satire that he is loved for in Australia.
If you are new to the short story form then Drewe is a great place to start, as he is a master at it.
How many times to you hear friends say they don’t have time to read or when they try to they fall asleep a few pages into a book? Short stories are great for today’s pace of life. According to Drewe, you can start and finish a story before falling asleep at night.
FULL REVIEW
The Rip is a wonderful collection of short stories set on the Australian coastline that look at lives changed in an instant by dramatic events. There are thirteen stories in the book, all of them a single separate gem that hang together to form a perfect strand. At the centre is the ocean, soothing and comforting, but in an instant, tempestuous and unforgiving; not unlike our relationships with our friends and loved ones.
In The Rip, Robert Drewe has us laughing at our ridiculousness, cringing at our desperation and saddened by the harsh cruelties of life; all the time with the underlying satire that he is loved for in Australia.
Drewe highlights that just like a rip; our lives can change forever in an instant, especially when we are unprepared for the unexpected.
Masculine Shoes
In Masculine Shoes Drewe takes a small poke at an experienced and confident man who is taken out of his comfort zone and thrown off balance. He focuses on how caught up we can get in the details of our life and how ridiculous this can be.
Tyler Foss is a veteran Hollywood location scout for Universal Studios who has travelled to a small island off the coast of Queensland in search of an ideal tropical setting.
Drewe paints a wonderful picture of a man who is normally comfortable in his own shoes – two inch cowboy boots made from the dead skin of every type of animal – but who must settle for something else in order to fit into the beach environment, in this case it is beach-friendly yak skin sneakers.
Unfortunately for Tyler they don’t attract the women, which is normally the case, but a pack of local dogs that he latter discovers to be dingoes. When it comes to the crunch, Tyler must decide between his safety and his shoes.
Thrown into the mix is Mia McKenzie, a cuisine art director renown for her styling of cephalopods, especially octopus. Tyler’s attempt to woo her is complicated by his reluctance to leave his room (due to the dingoes) and his footwear dilemma (women’s flip flops being the only thing left only the island to wear).
Stones Like Hearts
This story is set on the wild south-west coast of Western Australia where the Southern and Indian oceans meet.
On Shelley Beach, Cape Leewin we meet a young girl named Imogen who likes to collect stones in the shape of hearts and her mother Brigid who has come to toss her wedding ring into the ocean following the discovery of her husband’s infidelity.
When the couple unexpectedly come across a group of people who have discovered a body washed up on the shore, Brigid’s priorities change in an instant – she wants to protect her daughter from the harsh realities of life.
It is only in the final scene when they are a safe distance away in a café that Brigid realises she is still wearing her ring, and in fact seeking comfort in it. What is important to her has changed in a blink.
The Rip
The story The Rip takes us through a range of emotions and highlights the harshness and unforgiving nature of the sea.
A surfer has been taken by a shark the day before John Bingham and his daughter Sophie find themselves combing a beach on the west coast.
In their wanderings they come across a ridiculous couple who are playing newshound and cameraman and reporting on the dangers of the ocean while at the same time not paying heed to what is going on about them. When the wife is swept up in a rip it is John who must do the rescuing.
Robert Drewe is a much-loved Australian author who has created a set of stories that pick us up and take us on a short journey, most unexpected. Just like a rip I guess.
The Rip (Penguin Books, 2008, ISBN: 9780143009665, 216 pages).
There are thirteen stories in The Rip and at the centre is the ocean, soothing and comforting, but in an instant, tempestuous and unforgiving; not unlike our bonds with our friends and loved ones.
In The Rip, Robert Drewe has us laughing at our ridiculousness, cringing at our desperation and saddened by the harsh cruelties of life; all the time with the underlying satire that he is loved for in Australia.
If you are new to the short story form then Drewe is a great place to start, as he is a master at it.
How many times to you hear friends say they don’t have time to read or when they try to they fall asleep a few pages into a book? Short stories are great for today’s pace of life. According to Drewe, you can start and finish a story before falling asleep at night.
FULL REVIEW
The Rip is a wonderful collection of short stories set on the Australian coastline that look at lives changed in an instant by dramatic events. There are thirteen stories in the book, all of them a single separate gem that hang together to form a perfect strand. At the centre is the ocean, soothing and comforting, but in an instant, tempestuous and unforgiving; not unlike our relationships with our friends and loved ones.
In The Rip, Robert Drewe has us laughing at our ridiculousness, cringing at our desperation and saddened by the harsh cruelties of life; all the time with the underlying satire that he is loved for in Australia.
Drewe highlights that just like a rip; our lives can change forever in an instant, especially when we are unprepared for the unexpected.
Masculine Shoes
In Masculine Shoes Drewe takes a small poke at an experienced and confident man who is taken out of his comfort zone and thrown off balance. He focuses on how caught up we can get in the details of our life and how ridiculous this can be.
Tyler Foss is a veteran Hollywood location scout for Universal Studios who has travelled to a small island off the coast of Queensland in search of an ideal tropical setting.
Drewe paints a wonderful picture of a man who is normally comfortable in his own shoes – two inch cowboy boots made from the dead skin of every type of animal – but who must settle for something else in order to fit into the beach environment, in this case it is beach-friendly yak skin sneakers.
Unfortunately for Tyler they don’t attract the women, which is normally the case, but a pack of local dogs that he latter discovers to be dingoes. When it comes to the crunch, Tyler must decide between his safety and his shoes.
Thrown into the mix is Mia McKenzie, a cuisine art director renown for her styling of cephalopods, especially octopus. Tyler’s attempt to woo her is complicated by his reluctance to leave his room (due to the dingoes) and his footwear dilemma (women’s flip flops being the only thing left only the island to wear).
Stones Like Hearts
This story is set on the wild south-west coast of Western Australia where the Southern and Indian oceans meet.
On Shelley Beach, Cape Leewin we meet a young girl named Imogen who likes to collect stones in the shape of hearts and her mother Brigid who has come to toss her wedding ring into the ocean following the discovery of her husband’s infidelity.
When the couple unexpectedly come across a group of people who have discovered a body washed up on the shore, Brigid’s priorities change in an instant – she wants to protect her daughter from the harsh realities of life.
It is only in the final scene when they are a safe distance away in a café that Brigid realises she is still wearing her ring, and in fact seeking comfort in it. What is important to her has changed in a blink.
The Rip
The story The Rip takes us through a range of emotions and highlights the harshness and unforgiving nature of the sea.
A surfer has been taken by a shark the day before John Bingham and his daughter Sophie find themselves combing a beach on the west coast.
In their wanderings they come across a ridiculous couple who are playing newshound and cameraman and reporting on the dangers of the ocean while at the same time not paying heed to what is going on about them. When the wife is swept up in a rip it is John who must do the rescuing.
Robert Drewe is a much-loved Australian author who has created a set of stories that pick us up and take us on a short journey, most unexpected. Just like a rip I guess.
The Rip (Penguin Books, 2008, ISBN: 9780143009665, 216 pages).
November 3, 2012
A pretty depressing collection of short stories, my favourite being The water person and the tree person which illustrated the slick ugly side of pretentious literature types (fitting as reading for book club). It was great to read generally aus characters in an aus setting; some stories had fun humorous moments eg pink flip flops on blokey guy, but overall the cast of broken relationships made this a less than enjoyable read for me.
January 19, 2011
An excellent example of Robert Drewe's short stories. An short they are!
March 19, 2017
I don't usually read short stories, but when an unplanned baby-sit night caught me without the book I was reading, I chose The Rip from the bookshelves, deciding that I could read a story or two during the evening and return it to its place.
However, I found myself half way through a story which had interested me enough to want to see how it ended, so took it home.
Though Robert Drewe 'paints' some great pictures and sensitive portraits, I found the stories, over all, unsatisfying and bizarre, and skipped a couple totally.
I'm not sure that I will be looking for his other short stories - or even his novels!
However, I found myself half way through a story which had interested me enough to want to see how it ended, so took it home.
Though Robert Drewe 'paints' some great pictures and sensitive portraits, I found the stories, over all, unsatisfying and bizarre, and skipped a couple totally.
I'm not sure that I will be looking for his other short stories - or even his novels!
May 17, 2017
I like Robert Drewe's writing, mostly and the dark humour of some of his work. The Body Surfers is a great collection. This isn't. The stories are more like sketches; they don't go anywhere. The characters are cliches and North Coast stereotypes. Tedious seachangers. It's all just kind of generic creative writing course pieces that are nice and all but not much more. The kind of stuff you read in dull literary mags that take themselves way too seriously. Whatever. The Lap Pool is the best of the bunch, although it's not very interesting until near the end, when it really takes an unexpected turn.
June 22, 2018
Got this little beauty from the library. Robert Drewe at his scintillating best. Loved his character driven short stories that resonate so beautifully with my feelings about the unique Australian landscape and the people who live there.
July 14, 2018
I would say a 3 3/4 star for me. I like how he writes but I always find short stories leave me disatisfied. I need some instruction on how to truly appreciate them or at least some discussion on their merits and purpose (?)
February 2, 2020
Interesting take on Australian life. Some of these pieces are vignettes rather than stories, and not everyone can cope with what seems to be an unfinished story. It's interesting to see how Robert Drewe writes about different types of people.
April 10, 2019
After I first read The Shark Net I thought I loved Robert Drewe’s writing. Turns out I don’t. Some of these stories are literally 8 stumpy pages long and they were still unable to keep me interested.
July 18, 2019
I’m not really a fan of short stories but did find the first one in this book compelling reminding me of peter temple style.
August 17, 2020
This is a collection of short stories. Usually I could find a few gems in amongst all the stories but I didn’t like this at all. Some stories left me very confused as to the point.
February 5, 2022
Collection of short stories, all of them; rubbish.
June 12, 2023
He writes beautiful sentences and the imagery is great, but I didn’t see the point to most of these short stories.
April 11, 2025
Weird, that’s all I can say.
November 30, 2008
(Note to Librarians - this book is 'The Rip' by Robert Drewe)
A fine collection of short stories; running a gamut of styles and settings, each offering insight into the 'human condition' - not always necessarily fresh, but always well crafted and believable.
A fine collection of short stories; running a gamut of styles and settings, each offering insight into the 'human condition' - not always necessarily fresh, but always well crafted and believable.
March 16, 2010
A great collection from Robert Drewe, one of my favourite Aussie writers. Quite varied but all profoundly Australian, the common thread being the coastal or small town settings and often a character new or somehow out of place in that location.
December 5, 2012
I love short stories; I think there is such a skill in creating an effective short story. There was nothing wrong with these stories but they just didn't grab me. Except for "The Lap Pool." I seriously didn't see that ending coming!
June 6, 2016
I like the last story, "The life alignment of the coffee grower" best, but enjoyed almost all the stories in this collection, more than those in The Bodysurfers, maybe because the different Aussie blokes featured are so sympathetically drawn.
Read
July 6, 2011Great
March 24, 2016
Well read and easy to read.
Some of the stories were very good. But a lot of them just ended and gave me the impression the author had run out of ideas and had moved on.
Some of the stories were very good. But a lot of them just ended and gave me the impression the author had run out of ideas and had moved on.
July 29, 2014
Drewe definitely has great skill in short stories, enjoyable read.
May 17, 2014
Oh dear. Not my cup of tea. Read eight or so of the stories and tossed it in. All the stories were like "Picnic at Hanging Rock' type with an open ending some weird and some just stopped.
December 19, 2014
Short stories are not generally my preferred fiction however, I do enjoy Robert Drewe's writing and enjoyed this book.
January 17, 2017
Not sure if I enjoyed the stories but I loved the description of the coast and perhaps appreciated the realism of the characters.
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May 14, 2018favourite Drewe collection of Aussie stories..
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews