Signs of Life

Christchurch, post quakes, and the earth is still settling. Containers line the damaged streets, whose inhabitants waver like their city suspended between disaster and recovery. Tony, very much alive, is declared dead, Gerald misreads one too many situations in his community patrol, and boomer Carla tries online dating. At the epicentre of these taut, magnetic stories is twenty-something Flick who, just as she is finding her feet again, faces another violent disruption this time in human form while her mostly-ex gets set to marry.

Keenly observed and deftly humorous, Signs of Life turns on the smallest of details to tell the biggest of stories: how we carry on.

Amy Head is the author of the novel Rotoroa, and a collection of short stories, Tough which won the Best First Book Award for Fiction at the New Zealand Book Awards.