Dear Ibis

by Kate Liston-Mills

From the author of The Waterfowl Are Drunk! comes
a pointed and poignant collection of short stories for
the present moment. Interweaving fiction, poetry and
social commentary, Dear Ibis is a tender yet unflinching
meditation on what it means to feel at home, and what
it means to have this taken away. Set largely in New
South Wales’ lush South Coast against the haunting
backdrop of the 2019-20 bushfires come stories of birth and death, disability and resilience, colonial greed and moral reckonings. Infused with lyrical prose, vast coastal backdrop and a vividly realised cast of characters, Dear Ibis is a letter for anyone feeling unmoored trying to find their way back to shore.

195 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2021

About the author

KATE LISTON-MILLS lives in Pambula and works as a writer and teacher. Her works have been published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Telegraph, Writer's Edit, Prowlings, Tertangala, TIDE and the South Coast Writers Centre. The Waterfowl Are Drunk! Is her first novel.

Reviews

[Nic · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, there are two stand-out stories from this collection: Neighbours, and my favourite: A Race to the Bottom.

"Perhaps she will never finish a sentence for the rest of her life and all these unfinished sentences will just tangle into themselves..." (p87 - A Race to the Bottom)

And this from Empire (Part Two) -
".......you don't know how many times I've changed the colour of my front door just to tell a story."

Oh, but I do Dear Kate, Dear Kate
Oh, but I do.

[Ness Icecream · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book feels like an album that moves through moods and places and times in a life to weave it all together in the most beautiful, lyrical way. There are stories in this that resonate really deeply for me that I will be re-reading (on repeat like songs). The way Kate weaves images and metaphors together just blows my mind. Stunning.

[Griflet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mostly I despair of the state of play of Oz literature. I find the offerings predictable - highly curated and gatekept - a glance at the Acknowledgements page reveals the same small well drawn from over and over. Banal, solipsistic and same-same books. I don't understand why only a large population base appears to generate the kind of wild diversity I long to see; why we can't break out of our Antipodean rut and move beyond these close networked 'let's all the writers hold hands in a circle, facing inwards' and blow smoke up each other's derrieres stagnancies of Banal Realism.

'Dear Ibis' was a firecracker burst away from these soggy offerings. It was a joy and delight to read. Liston is a writer being brave and vulnerable and open; creating raw, authentic tales and having fun doing it, capturing the genuis loci of her local area on the page. I highly recommend this collection of short stories and as a writer, felt admiration reading it. It's full of heart and fire and pain and survival and tenderness.

Have a crack, enjoy the ride.

[Pip Tlaskal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a beautiful collection - best short story collection I have read for a long time. Some stories feel as if they come from the Henry Lawson Golden Age of the short story, others are deftly contemporary with an eerie sense of our anthropocene reality yet with a lyric uplift, a slight beat of hopeful wings.
stories about:
- Fishing with explosives
-kids paying for stealing eggs
-ibis baby on a highway
-6 wooden elephants
-refugee neighbours in Wollongong
-A postnatally depressed woman has coffee with her child
-A mother leaves the family home
-a prose poem about the bushfires
-an ibis/human self protagonist realising they are the antagonist in our environmental meltdown
-two brothers and a shotgun
- A surfy girls' diary
-reviving a dead tree

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

'I am not fit to control people's hearts. I am not sure anyone is. And that's the beauty of hearts everyone is free to choose but one lie becomes many I've seen it one problem leads to another because we really did back error upon error how far back does it go? Listen to that white noise and stand on your feet now cause the stacks are so high, Dear Ibis.' From Empire (Part Two).

I found this an exceptional short story collection that filled me with moments of absorption, transformation and connection. It centres on themes around home (place in this book is South Coast of NSW), grief, loneliness, colonisation, self acceptance and resilience. Georgia the Bin Chicken runs through this collection at first subtly and then later profoundly. Loved her story ❤.