Like a House on Fire Study Guide

Kennedy was born in Lincolnshire, England, but moved to Australia during her childhood. As a teenager she won a short story prize in The Canberra Times, and she went on to study creative writing at university. She took a hiatus from writing after graduation, but began entering short story competitions again when she was in her thirties. Since then, she has published many fictional works—including her highly acclaimed short story collection Dark Roots (2006)—and been awarded numerous literary prizes. In 2010, for example, her novel The World Beneath won the People’s Choice Award at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and she has won The Age Short Story competition twice. Kennedy’s memoir, Sing, and Don’t Cry (2005), charts her experiences traveling and working in rural Mexico. She has also published several poetry collections: Signs of Other Fires (2001), Joyflight (2004), and The Taste of River Water (2011). More recently, her short story anthology Like a House on Fire was shortlisted for the Stella Prize (2013) and won the Steele Rudd Award in the same year.

Kennedy is interested in universal human experiences and emotions, and takes her inspiration from everyday events in the world around her. Throughout the anthology Like a House on Fire she explores the relationship between parents and their children. Kennedy may have drawn on her own experiences as a mother in order to portray the ordinary tensions of family life, or perhaps she was influenced by the lives of those she observed in Victoria, Australia, where much of her writing is set. In “Like a House on Fire”—the story that gives the collection its name—the narrator grapples with the challenge of remaining relevant to his three young children. Preoccupied with television and mass-produced plastic toys, they are growing up in an increasingly globalized and capitalistic society, which the narrator seems unsure whether to embrace or confront. The story is littered with references to Western capitalism and modernity, themes that Kennedy approaches with both humor and critical cynicism. Her writing often addresses unequal power dynamics and is critical of traditional gender roles. However, she portrays her characters—who are often conflicted by modern challenges or identity politics—without judgment. It is with this realistic portrayal of contemporary life that she is able to share a diversity of Australian voices.

In interviews, Kennedy often explains how Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird hugely influenced both her life and writing, encouraging her to write with conviction. Kennedy also cites Peter Carey’s subversive short stories as a source of inspiration, along with Lewis Hyde’s The Gift, which—as with Kennedy’s work—explores capitalism and modernity. Like Kennedy, in Mateship with Birds, Carrie Tiffany explores country life in Australia, paying particular attention to the isolation and family tensions experienced by ordinary people. Similarly, Jon McGregor’s So Many Ways to Begin interrogates themes of identity, memory and masculinity, paying close attention to human relationships and people’s internal emotional lives.