About a month ago, I wrote a small posting about a cliched phrase I'd come across in a review of a book I'd quite liked. I got to talking about character development in the novel which elicited a comment from Kerryn Goldsworthy that read, in part: "...he sounds less like the kind of character you'd find in realist literary fiction than like a version of the contemporary crime fiction hero model: idiosyncratic, damaged, quirky, maybe ageing, bit of a loner, crummy love life, clearly defined cultural tastes and so on."
Which was followed up by another commenter, meika, who added: "Kerryn I think you forgot the empty fridge at home."
What reminded me of this was a memory that came to me from Peter Temple's Jack Irish novel, Black Tide, which I finished a little while back. It's just one sentence, but I think it says it all.
"At home, sad, misty, loveless Saturday night, a chicken pie and two glasses of red took care of me."
