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Permafrost
Visual and performance artist, and winner of the inaugural Kill Your Darlings Manuscript Award, SJ Norman turns their hand to fiction with spectacular results.
This brilliant collection of short fiction explores the shifting spaces of desire, loss and longing. Inverting and queering the gothic and romantic traditions, each story represents a different take on the concept of a haunting or the haunted. Though it ranges across themes and locations - from small-town Australia to Hokkaido to rural England - Permafrost is united by the power of the narratorial voice, with its auto-fictional resonances, dark wit and swagger.
Whether recounting the confusion of a child trying to decipher their father and stepmother's new relationship, the surrealness of an after-hours tour of Auschwitz, or a journey to wintry Japan to reconnect with a former lover, Permafrost unsettles, transports and impresses in equal measure.
This brilliant collection of short fiction explores the shifting spaces of desire, loss and longing. Inverting and queering the gothic and romantic traditions, each story represents a different take on the concept of a haunting or the haunted. Though it ranges across themes and locations - from small-town Australia to Hokkaido to rural England - Permafrost is united by the power of the narratorial voice, with its auto-fictional resonances, dark wit and swagger.
Whether recounting the confusion of a child trying to decipher their father and stepmother's new relationship, the surrealness of an after-hours tour of Auschwitz, or a journey to wintry Japan to reconnect with a former lover, Permafrost unsettles, transports and impresses in equal measure.
213 pages, Paperback
First published September 28, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews
November 20, 2021
The stories in this collection are chilling at times, erotic at times, and there’s a lot of “young Aussie abroad” content (young restless people being angsty in various parts of Europe). The stories are all well written, but otherwise not much particularly sets them apart. They feel familiar, rather than brave or piercing. Permafrost is stable foundation from which Norman will hopefully grow and explore in their work.
My full review of Permafrost can be found on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
My full review of Permafrost can be found on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
January 23, 2022
Brilliant short stories. A collection of diverse characters, these are inclusive in authentic, uncontrived way. Visceral writing, not a word wasted and they convey much in just a few lines. The first stories are unnerving with an element of supernatural & left me wondering what happened at times. The last story was by turns gritty & moving. Always interesting, with a strong sense of place, this is a new gothic & an exciting author to watch.
October 30, 2021
Permafrost is a collection of short stories that really had an impact on me. The stories are set in different parts of the world and are dark and quite strange. First Nations artist and writer SJ Norman sure knows how to draw a reader in. Thanks to Better Reading for my preview copy.
March 17, 2022
Thank you SJ Norman for getting me out of my reading slump. The first short story collection I've read this year and won't be the last, I hope. It will be a difficult one to top.
This slightly charged gothic collection suited my mood while reeling from the news from the Russian war in Ukraine.
Some of the stories are set in Europe each have an unsettling element.
A great inclusion in the 2022 Stella longlist and pleased to have got to it after it being on my TBR for longer than it should have been.
This slightly charged gothic collection suited my mood while reeling from the news from the Russian war in Ukraine.
Some of the stories are set in Europe each have an unsettling element.
A great inclusion in the 2022 Stella longlist and pleased to have got to it after it being on my TBR for longer than it should have been.
February 24, 2022
Permafrost by SJ Norman has just been named on the longlist for the 2022 Stella Prize. I had a feeling it might make the list and read it last week in anticipation and I’m very glad I did. It’s a very accomplished piece of writing. SJ Norman is an artist and writer and they have an impressive list of awards and achievements to their name. I think though that Permafrost is their first collection of short stories.
I found the writing raw and beautiful. The stories move between locations from Australia to Japan to England. From an afterhours tour at Auschwitz to a journey in winter in Japan to find a former lover, these stories focus mostly on young people whose longing and desires and lost loves are often given a queer focus. In fact one of the things that struck me was that each narrator was unnamed and there were blurred lines between genders and sexuality. This gave the stories a dreamy and surreal quality.
Each story also brought in an element of a haunting or being haunted. This meant that within each story there was a tiny supernatural twist – a little bit eerie, a little bit unsettling and often leaving you with more questions than answers. But this is just my kind of writing to be honest!
Permafrost is a hard yes from me and I’m completely unsurprised it has made #thestellaprizelonglist2022. Get reading if you haven’t picked this up yet.
4 and a half stars
I found the writing raw and beautiful. The stories move between locations from Australia to Japan to England. From an afterhours tour at Auschwitz to a journey in winter in Japan to find a former lover, these stories focus mostly on young people whose longing and desires and lost loves are often given a queer focus. In fact one of the things that struck me was that each narrator was unnamed and there were blurred lines between genders and sexuality. This gave the stories a dreamy and surreal quality.
Each story also brought in an element of a haunting or being haunted. This meant that within each story there was a tiny supernatural twist – a little bit eerie, a little bit unsettling and often leaving you with more questions than answers. But this is just my kind of writing to be honest!
Permafrost is a hard yes from me and I’m completely unsurprised it has made #thestellaprizelonglist2022. Get reading if you haven’t picked this up yet.
4 and a half stars
January 14, 2022
Hmmm. A very unique set of stories. I see the word “haunted” in its various iterations thrown around about this book a lot and would agree that this is a good word that each of these stories share in common, though in different ways. Which is really interesting, to see how this same concept is shifted from story to story. Then there are very lyrical moments that you just have to pause after reading and sit with, re-read. That’s always a plus in my book.
Other words I’ve seen to describe this book are “uncanny,” “disorienting,” and “disturbing,” and I also feel that all of these hit on some of the key feelings invoked by the writing. All of these stories take everyday scenes and render them in ways that could be seen as preternatural if you shift your perception just a bit. These stories feel like walking into a memory and reaching out to see what lies beyond the recall of image, sounds, scents. But they also feel like the moment of recall, using each of the senses to pull yourself into a different reality.
“The currawongs, the river traffic; these are my bone songs. My home frequencies. These are the sounds that have held me since I was born and have never failed, before now, to sing me back into this ground that grew me up.”
“It’s like rock climbing, I think I said to you on the phone once. Every minute ritual, every familiar sensation is a foothold in the sheer, vertiginous drop of solitude.”
Sure, there were some things I didn’t like here and there for sheer subject matter. But in the end the way it was written and the emotion and atmosphere the writing brought out of each story, almost became more of the point than what was happening in the story or at least equally important. I think “intimate” would be another word I’d want to ascribe, there’s always this feeling of closeness, of familiarity with the uncanny lingering on the fringes.
All in all, the writing is stunning and does things which seem very unique to me, in a good way. The stories are very haunting and leave you with the sensation of needing to ponder over them for much longer, whether you parse out any new information from the act or not.
Other words I’ve seen to describe this book are “uncanny,” “disorienting,” and “disturbing,” and I also feel that all of these hit on some of the key feelings invoked by the writing. All of these stories take everyday scenes and render them in ways that could be seen as preternatural if you shift your perception just a bit. These stories feel like walking into a memory and reaching out to see what lies beyond the recall of image, sounds, scents. But they also feel like the moment of recall, using each of the senses to pull yourself into a different reality.
“The currawongs, the river traffic; these are my bone songs. My home frequencies. These are the sounds that have held me since I was born and have never failed, before now, to sing me back into this ground that grew me up.”
“It’s like rock climbing, I think I said to you on the phone once. Every minute ritual, every familiar sensation is a foothold in the sheer, vertiginous drop of solitude.”
Sure, there were some things I didn’t like here and there for sheer subject matter. But in the end the way it was written and the emotion and atmosphere the writing brought out of each story, almost became more of the point than what was happening in the story or at least equally important. I think “intimate” would be another word I’d want to ascribe, there’s always this feeling of closeness, of familiarity with the uncanny lingering on the fringes.
All in all, the writing is stunning and does things which seem very unique to me, in a good way. The stories are very haunting and leave you with the sensation of needing to ponder over them for much longer, whether you parse out any new information from the act or not.
March 12, 2022
Ooh er, brilliant writing , powerful evocations of people and places make this short story collection an outstanding read. Set in Australia and elsewhere around the world. Modern, some historical elements. I came across it on the Stella shortlist for 2022.
May 15, 2025
Oh I liked this one so much. The endings of all the stories felt like they arrived all of a sudden in the best way. SJ writes about waiting and not getting things - about memory, sex, music - in ways I have not read. I don’t understand how this isn’t recommend more I picked it up randomly at the library and haven’t read anything about it. Australian queer books seem to disappear on publication… I hope it gets a second life soon
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July 31, 2026the way I just do not care about these characters
Read
October 2, 2021I remember the nightmare. Of course I do. It did not want to be forgotten. It demanded space, and I gave it space. The absence of control, the fact I had no say in my narrative – that I was both bystander and helpless protagonist – was an implacable loss. I awoke; only my loss continued. It goes on still.
This nightmare was akin to what the narrators experience in S. J. Norman’s debut collection, Permafrost. In “Unspeakable”, a person is taken by a tour guide through Auschwitz. They relate how their guide longs for “things that take nothing from you and leave no residue”. Norman offers readers the opposite: an eerie, ineffable sense of haunted isolation.
Permafrost’s narrators are first-person mysteries. Lonely and enigmatic, they find that “Every minute ritual, every familiar sensation is a foothold in the sheer, vertiginous drop of solitude”. UQP describe the work as “autofictional”, but this is a misnomer – though the term was never much more than marketing speak to begin with. The happy accumulation of details that happen to coincide with the author’s life is not autofiction; it’s a starting point.
Chilly landscapes predominate: Hokkaido, England, Poland, Berlin. They form a kind of hinterland. Think, too, of the etymology of that word: from the German, hinter, meaning behind; a territory normally closed off or impenetrable, mysterious, forested.
In “Stepmother”, a young girl, acutely conscious of her gender and age, takes a trip with her father and his new partner: “I wanted to live a weightless life, always floating.” It is a keenly felt narrative of family dynamics – her stepmother’s exotic, lively, voluptuous world blotting out the long-suffering, anonymous figure of her mother, “backlit ... through the half-open side door”. Norman reflects on sex and death, as filtered through the consciousness of a girl who is coming to know both. She is prepubescent and, it is hinted, a little puppy-fat: “potato-shaped”, as she puts it.
Her stepmother is dangerous and carnal, “Dragging the tips of her red enamel fingers over the contours of a map”, a figure akin to one of those “Women with blood in their teeth” whom the family observe at Canberra’s National Gallery. Wry detail predominates: hotels “smelled the way that hotels smell” (the tautological accuracy of that understatement); Renaissance portraits of Virgin and Child depict “The man’s fingers, pincered, slightly camp, delivering a blessing”; swimming “relieved me of the weight of my own flesh”. Norman conveys a sense of the twilit period between childhood and puberty, when we are still fascinated by the diaphanous texture of life and the contours of our slowly vanishing prepubescence. The story’s final reveal is mysterious and gentle, a dream just beginning to bloom at the edge of consciousness.
Continue reading: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/c...
This nightmare was akin to what the narrators experience in S. J. Norman’s debut collection, Permafrost. In “Unspeakable”, a person is taken by a tour guide through Auschwitz. They relate how their guide longs for “things that take nothing from you and leave no residue”. Norman offers readers the opposite: an eerie, ineffable sense of haunted isolation.
Permafrost’s narrators are first-person mysteries. Lonely and enigmatic, they find that “Every minute ritual, every familiar sensation is a foothold in the sheer, vertiginous drop of solitude”. UQP describe the work as “autofictional”, but this is a misnomer – though the term was never much more than marketing speak to begin with. The happy accumulation of details that happen to coincide with the author’s life is not autofiction; it’s a starting point.
Chilly landscapes predominate: Hokkaido, England, Poland, Berlin. They form a kind of hinterland. Think, too, of the etymology of that word: from the German, hinter, meaning behind; a territory normally closed off or impenetrable, mysterious, forested.
In “Stepmother”, a young girl, acutely conscious of her gender and age, takes a trip with her father and his new partner: “I wanted to live a weightless life, always floating.” It is a keenly felt narrative of family dynamics – her stepmother’s exotic, lively, voluptuous world blotting out the long-suffering, anonymous figure of her mother, “backlit ... through the half-open side door”. Norman reflects on sex and death, as filtered through the consciousness of a girl who is coming to know both. She is prepubescent and, it is hinted, a little puppy-fat: “potato-shaped”, as she puts it.
Her stepmother is dangerous and carnal, “Dragging the tips of her red enamel fingers over the contours of a map”, a figure akin to one of those “Women with blood in their teeth” whom the family observe at Canberra’s National Gallery. Wry detail predominates: hotels “smelled the way that hotels smell” (the tautological accuracy of that understatement); Renaissance portraits of Virgin and Child depict “The man’s fingers, pincered, slightly camp, delivering a blessing”; swimming “relieved me of the weight of my own flesh”. Norman conveys a sense of the twilit period between childhood and puberty, when we are still fascinated by the diaphanous texture of life and the contours of our slowly vanishing prepubescence. The story’s final reveal is mysterious and gentle, a dream just beginning to bloom at the edge of consciousness.
Continue reading: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/c...
September 21, 2021
I personally love reading short stories. I think that sometimes the concise format of a short story packs more than the longer stories.
Permafrost is a collection of 7 short stories. Each story takes the reader to a different part of the world – Australia, Japan, and even a Nazi concentration camp. The author has given such atmospheric descriptions to the surroundings and the characters. The details make you feel like you are actually at that place and watching it happen. However, I also think the themes of the stories are a bit dark and may not be for every reader.
My favourite story from the collection is 'Secondhand'. If you enjoy short stories, I would definitely recommend this one, and while you are reading it, take your time, read it slowly and savour each story!
Thank you, Better Reading AU and UQP Books, for my gifted copy of Permafrost to enjoy.
Permafrost is a collection of 7 short stories. Each story takes the reader to a different part of the world – Australia, Japan, and even a Nazi concentration camp. The author has given such atmospheric descriptions to the surroundings and the characters. The details make you feel like you are actually at that place and watching it happen. However, I also think the themes of the stories are a bit dark and may not be for every reader.
My favourite story from the collection is 'Secondhand'. If you enjoy short stories, I would definitely recommend this one, and while you are reading it, take your time, read it slowly and savour each story!
Thank you, Better Reading AU and UQP Books, for my gifted copy of Permafrost to enjoy.
September 22, 2021
#BRPreview, @betterreadingau
Permafrost by SJ Norman is a collection of short stories revolving around a theme of searching for something allusive, something just out of reach. Is it belonging, love, finding oneself, or life purpose? Each story line has a dark undertow flowing through, supercharged with lust and a sense of sadness. Permafrost; hauntingly seven themes in seven stories, set across different countries each looking for answers. It is for the reader to decipher what are the possible outcomes of each scenario, as you will reflect on each story.
A wonderfully written collection of short stories that follow a theme of loss yet chillingly raw life encounters. Well done SJ Norman.
Permafrost by SJ Norman is a collection of short stories revolving around a theme of searching for something allusive, something just out of reach. Is it belonging, love, finding oneself, or life purpose? Each story line has a dark undertow flowing through, supercharged with lust and a sense of sadness. Permafrost; hauntingly seven themes in seven stories, set across different countries each looking for answers. It is for the reader to decipher what are the possible outcomes of each scenario, as you will reflect on each story.
A wonderfully written collection of short stories that follow a theme of loss yet chillingly raw life encounters. Well done SJ Norman.
February 13, 2022
This short story collection by SJ Norman is unsettling brilliant. Each story reads like you’re in a dreamlike stasis, chilling and gothic in nature. ‘Permafrost’ has moments of startling narration that dazzles, literary skill clear from Norman and their debut collection. From addiction to love, longing and loss, ‘Permafrost’ is an exceptional short story collection that will haunt you after reading in the best way.
December 27, 2021
Like any book of short stories these ranged, some were a 3-star and others a 5. What was prevalent throughout were incredibly evocative descriptions of places and experiences both unique to Australia and to the Australian expatriate experience and these I really loved.
March 19, 2023
I actually really didn’t enjoy this book, it’s not my usual genre of choice and I only read it because it’s my book club book this month. But I can’t deny that it was brilliantly written and did an incredible job of capturing mood in a way that I’ve never seen done.
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October 14, 2021An ARC read for work. Published reviewed coming soon.
October 3, 2022
Finally finished! ^_^ Spent all day today on the swings, listening to Sufjan whilst reading this ~ a transportive experience 🦋
March 9, 2022
Absolutely loved the writing!
January 17, 2024
4.25/5
A man/forest spirit (I'm still not sure) gets fisted up to the elbow. That wasn't even in the short story about love. Brilliant.
This is a book of stories about being haunted/hauntings.
A man/forest spirit (I'm still not sure) gets fisted up to the elbow. That wasn't even in the short story about love. Brilliant.
This is a book of stories about being haunted/hauntings.
October 18, 2021
Seven stories tracing the outlines of a shadowy and lonely world where memories haunt and claim centre stage. 'Unspeakable' reduced me to tears as my own memories of a similar experience came flooding back in. It takes a very skilled author to summon the terror of the Holocaust without falling into cliche narratives. 'Whitehart' was another highlight, a perfectly composed tale of pleasure and decay in the misty English winter. The use of sounds as a literary decide to summon memories in 'Playback' was superb. This is a superb first book!
April 9, 2022
"'Books are objects of incredible intimacy, as intimate as clothing or jewellery. People handle books with their hands; their spit and sweat gets on the pages; they travel with them and sleep with them. By the time the books come to me, they’re drenched in the essence of the last person to have read them and this residue is transferred to me. "
Every word in these stories is perfectly placed - startling for a debut collection. They can be both provocative and yet somehow easy to read and digest. They transition from the witty recording of the mundane through the surrealism of horror and the intensity of queered sexual romance. Place is expertly - and often showily - evoked. And yet - many of the stories left me unmoved. I admired and promptly forgot much of the content, more form perhaps than content. There were a couple of exceptions early on: Whitehart was a particular pleasure to read, but on the whole this felt a little empty until the final, longest, installment of Playback - in which a young woman arrives back to a place she thought she no longer needed - which finally felt like it had something urgent to say.
Every word in these stories is perfectly placed - startling for a debut collection. They can be both provocative and yet somehow easy to read and digest. They transition from the witty recording of the mundane through the surrealism of horror and the intensity of queered sexual romance. Place is expertly - and often showily - evoked. And yet - many of the stories left me unmoved. I admired and promptly forgot much of the content, more form perhaps than content. There were a couple of exceptions early on: Whitehart was a particular pleasure to read, but on the whole this felt a little empty until the final, longest, installment of Playback - in which a young woman arrives back to a place she thought she no longer needed - which finally felt like it had something urgent to say.
February 8, 2023
S.J. NormanI personally really enjoyed the book, the different themes within give a glimpse of what the characters life is like. Their sorrow, their excitement making you feel like their emotions are yours. Since you only get a glimpse into the lives of these characters you don't fully know what has happened most of which you need to interpret beyond the pages. Most of the character you don't know the name of. But you get invested anyway, because you want to see what happens in the short slice that you get to witness.
My personal favourite of the short stories being Whitehart, there was a lot of symbolism, much of which I'm still digesting and forming my own interpretation, since what you can gleam from the story is really all up to your experiences and what you want it to mean.
Most of the stories are very symbolic with lots of room to fit in your own interpretation of the piece. Though I highly recommend to give this one a read. It's relatively short, the stories get you hooked as soon as you start them. I finished it in only a day or two so it's well worth the time investment.
My personal favourite of the short stories being Whitehart, there was a lot of symbolism, much of which I'm still digesting and forming my own interpretation, since what you can gleam from the story is really all up to your experiences and what you want it to mean.
Most of the stories are very symbolic with lots of room to fit in your own interpretation of the piece. Though I highly recommend to give this one a read. It's relatively short, the stories get you hooked as soon as you start them. I finished it in only a day or two so it's well worth the time investment.
September 12, 2021
Made up of seven short stories Permafrost will have you thinking. I found that each story left me with so many questions. You are left to work out for yourself where each story might go and how it might end. I found this to be an interesting concept.
One of the stories does have a quite graphic sex scene and some of the others have strong language that some might not be happy with so consider yourself warned.
Each story is set in a very different location. You are taken from Australia, Japan, England and into one of the nazi death camps.
This is an easy book to read and a great one to carry with you if you have short time frames available to read such as lunch breaks at work or while travelling on the bus or train to work.
One of the stories does have a quite graphic sex scene and some of the others have strong language that some might not be happy with so consider yourself warned.
Each story is set in a very different location. You are taken from Australia, Japan, England and into one of the nazi death camps.
This is an easy book to read and a great one to carry with you if you have short time frames available to read such as lunch breaks at work or while travelling on the bus or train to work.
September 28, 2021
I was so happy to score this advance reading copy from Better Reading! I have a soft spot for short stories so couldn't wait to start 'Permafrost', which didn't disappoint! The occasional references to Indigenous ( Australian) issues really struck a chord, and I love seeing more "Mob" writers out there (opening the eyes of the world as well as non-Indigenous Aussies). I'm still thinking about some of the stories. and am anxious to experience more of the same. Obviously it's not all Mob-centric, but personally I really appreciated the references (within the context of the relevant stories) and hopefully they will be teaching moments, especially for our non-Indigenous fellow Aussies. Great yarnin' Sis!
September 13, 2021
As with any collection of short stories, some resonate with you more than others. In Permafrost I found I enjoyed some stories more than others, but all of them were absorbing and many were disturbing, some I know will be with me for a while. SJ Norman’s writing effortlessly transports you to the different settings, though they vary widely, from hotel rooms to concentration camps. Even within the confines of a short story, the writing puts you completely there alongside the characters. If you read them quickly, one after another, it makes for a disorientating, but also an exhilarating journey. It’s a great trip, but expect some culture-shock.
September 26, 2021
I received an advance copy thanks to Better Reading and University of Queensland Press. It is a collection of 7 short stories, each set in different environments, landscapes and circumstances, but each narrated by their own somewhat troubled character, who is searching for meaning, acceptance, belonging or their own place in the world. The writing is very abstract in style and has very vivid, at times graphic and somewhat dark imagery that immerses the reader in the story. The style of writing leaves much of the content and meaning to the reader’s interpretation. I enjoyed the short story format and in particular enjoyed Stepmother and Secondhand.
October 1, 2021
I’ve been eagerly awaiting this book and I read it the same day it arrived. My favourite story was probably the last one in the book, Playback, but the entire collection was excellent to read. The stories are simultaneously Atmospheric, almost otherworldly at times while exploring the everyday, the mundane & relatable. They left me, at the end of each one, pausing and attempting to let them settle, to let them land. I’ll be thinking about these stories for weeks to come.
October 10, 2021
I generally don’t click with short stories but I keep trying because occasionally I am rewarded with a collection as amazing as this. Luminous prose and such control, I loved these moody, atmospheric stories. My favourites were the titular Perma Frost and Whitehard (the fisting scene especially), but there’s not a dud in the bunch. Brilliant.
September 7, 2021
A compelling collection of short stories from a debut author. There is a gothic and haunting element subtlety weaved into each story.
September 30, 2021
Permafrost is a collection of 7 stories of loss, love and longing - each one leaving a different kind of hollow ache in my heart and throat.
A haunting, sophisticated collection from SJ Norman.
A haunting, sophisticated collection from SJ Norman.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews