Pictures of You: Collected Stories, by Tony Birch

A collection of Tony Birch's stand out stories. 

Having recently won the Age Book of the Year award for Women and Children, and with a substantial body of work now to his name, it feels like the time has come to celebrate writer Tony Birch. Hence the lushly produced Pictures of You, a collection of twenty-two previously published stories.

Birch is a writer who doesn’t stray too far from what he knows. He concentrates on his gritty Fitzroy upbringing, a time when people’s lives played out on the street. It was a time, too, when technology was whatever tools you had on hand, and what you could do with them. In a favourite story, “The Bicycle Thieves”, a foul mouthed neighbor donates a bicycle he cobbled together to some adventure seeking local kids. In other stories Birch tackles his fraught relationship with his father, scenes of domestic violence, terrible working class jobs, the vulnerability of children and the lives of Indigenous people. 

Considering the difficult subject matter of many of Birch’s stories, they should be harrowing to read. Instead they provide warm, sympathetic portraits of people under duress. These are timeless stories written in a simple, unadorned prose, every word compelling.

Pictures of You: Collected Stories, by Tony Birch. Published by U.Q.P. $45

JAN26