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  • Published: 28 September 2011
  • ISBN: 9781742746012
  • Imprint: Random House Australia
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

The Pillow Fight




A brilliant, shocking story of domestic violence, with a twist.

A brilliant, shocking story of domestic violence, with a twist.

The gripping story of Luke, an easy-going deep-sea diver who likes to please everyone, and the strong-willed, beautiful Charlotte with whom he falls in love. On their wedding night she picks a fight with Luke in their hotel room and he ends up with a black eye that lasts well into their honeymoon.

The novel unfolds with flashbacks to that night, when Luke finds himself questioning whether he's just ruined his life, and forwards again to their honeymoon, where Charlotte's moods veer wildly from loving to livid. When this novel was first published, Carmel Bird described it as 'The chilling calibration of a violent marriage told with wistful compassion and an erotic charge.'

  • Published: 28 September 2011
  • ISBN: 9781742746012
  • Imprint: Random House Australia
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

About the author

Matthew Condon

Journalist and writer, Matthew Condon was born in Brisbane and has lived in the UK, Germany and France. His first book, The Motorcycle Cafe, was widely reviewed and praised. Usher and The Ancient Guild of Tycoons were both shortlisted for the NBC Banjo Award for Fiction. A Night At The Pink Poodle and The Lulu Magnet won back-to-back Steele Rudd Awards for Short Fiction. His bestseller, The Trout Opera was shortlisted for the Qld Premier’s Prize for Fiction.

Date: 2013-08-06
Matthew Condon was born in Brisbane in 1962 and has lived in the UK, Germany and France. He is the author of several novels and short story collections, including The Motorcycle Cafe, A Night at the Pink Poodle, The Pillow Fight and Lime Bar. He is also the recipient of two Steel Rudd awards for short fiction.

Award-winning writer and journalist Matthew Condon is the author of over ten highly acclaimed books. He has written for leading newspapers and journals including Brisbane's Courier-Mail, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Melbourne's Sunday Age.

His books have been widely reviewed and praised and have won, and been shortlisted for, numerous awards including the Steele Rudd Award for Short Fiction, the NBC Banjo Award for Fiction, and the Qld Premier’s Prize for Fiction.

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Praise for The Pillow Fight

A remarkably written, stunningly fresh focus on the pathology of intimacy. It enters into that barely recognised taboo of our society, female-to-male violence.

Frank Moorhouse

Shockingly dark... a deeply convincing, caustically witty and memorably poignant study.

Who Weekly

A novel that confronts and entertains, its smouldering narrative getting hotter and moving into spare suspense.

Daily Telegraph

Charts the genesis and subsequent disintegration of a marriage with distressing clarity, gentle wisdom and beautifully evocative prose... a moving, eloquent novel.

Marie Claire

Condon never loses sight of humanness for caricature - his characters are quietly realised, their confusion, shame and humiliations real. This is a brave book deserving a receptive readership.

Murray Waldren, The Australian

There is great pleasure to be had from Condon's prose. It is inventive without being forced, the sentences as crisp and as sharp as his dazzling heroine. Here is a writer of considerable talent in masterful control of his material... Condon... has written a powerful novel.

The Age