The Home Girls

The Home Girls is a collection of candid, witty stories about rural and suburban life.

Set in the mid-twentieth century, these are tales of ordinary people and domestic life. Masters was, as the Advertiser remarked, 'a natural storyteller'.

Between the publication of The Home Girls, in 1982, and her death, Olga Masters was acclaimed as one of Australia's finest writers. Her short stories, distinguished by their acute observation of human behaviour, drew comparison with the finest exponents of the form, such as Chekhov.

The stories in this collection:

The Home Girls

The Rages of Mrs Torrens

On the Train

Leaving Home

Passenger to Berrigo

The Done Thing

A Rat in the Building

A Dog that Squeaked

A Young Man’s Fancy

The Lang Women

The Snake and Bad Tom

A Poor Winner

Call Me Pinkie

Adams and Barker

Mrs Lister

The Creek Way

The Children Are Coming

A Good Marriage

You’ll Like It There

The Sea on a Sunday

Olga Masters was born in Pambula, New South Wales, in 1919. She married at twenty-one and had seven children, working part-time as a journalist, leaving her little opportunity to develop her interest in creative writing until she was in her fifties. In the 1970s Masters wrote a radio play and a stage play, and between 1977 and 1981 she won prizes for her short stories. Her debut, the short-story collection The Home Girls, won a National Book Council Award in 1983. She wrote two novels and three collections of stories, the third of which was published posthumously. Masters died in 1986.

'She can be both tender and funny, and always there is absolute authenticity of detail, a strong sense of time and place, an effortless depiction of personality.' Judges' Report, NBC Awards