The Bonesetter's Fee and other stories

Summary

Runner Up in the 2021 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award

The Bonesetter’s Fee and Other Stories brings light to the growing pains of the migrant experience. Murphy explores themes of identity, breathing life into superstition and myth. The collection encapsulates how one’s heritage and history can influence their personhood, and how human connection and understanding links us together. With each story unique, Murphy links her cultural legends and customs to modern Australian society. The Bonesetter’s Fee and Other Stories is a captivating and inspiring collection of work, weaving a little bit of mystery into the reader’s life. 

“Rashida Murphy compresses lifetimes into these nuanced and intimate stories where characters grapple with ways of being and belonging. Her characters remake lives in shifting terrain where sometimes it is barely possible to speak, let alone be heard. The echoes of absences, and of unspoken, misremembered and intentionally forgotten events, ripple across time and place.” Michelle Michau Crawford, Leaving Elvis 

‘Rashida Murphy writes with elegance and simplicity, paying homage to girls and their inner lives without losing sight of the absurdity of social expectations, and the sting of the daily humiliations women face. She does so without relinquishing their agency, their internal complexity and their sense of fun. The Bonesetter’s Fee is a beautiful and confident collection by an author whose gifts of prose are immeasurable.’ Sisonke Msimang, Always Another Country

'Crisp and observant, these stories give a powerful voice to quiet experience.' Brooke Dunnell, Winner, 2021 Fogarty Literary Award

‘Rashida Murphy’s The Bonesetter’s Fee And Other Stories is a luminous, skillfully-crafted collection about little lives narrated in a distinctively compelling voice.’ Roanna Gonsalves, judge, 2021 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award