'An intense and exhilarating experience.' Sun Herald In these spare, piercing stories, people struggle with change and disintegration. Their lives fragment, their hearts break, the world deceives. Tim Winton's first collection of short fiction, Scission shows him marking out the territory he came to stamp as his own: the gritty courage demanded by the everyday, the epiphanies to be found in the commonplace. Winton takes the mundane and renders it exceptional. 'A tour de force of controlled ghastliness … Winton brings a tough sensitivity reminiscent of Raymond Carver or Andre Dubus. Sharp with crisp and solid detail.' Times Literary Supplement 'His fiction is full of care, in all three senses – of craftsmanship, of moral concern, and of a sobriety before the hard facts of life … The author of Dubliners would not have been ashamed to have found Winton's story Secrets in a corrupt edition of that volume.' National Times 'Winton uses common words in uncommon ways and to read them is to experience the contemporary English language honed to a fine degree of richness, texture and power.' West Australian