Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Smokehouse

Rate this book
A man watches a boy in a playground and pictures him in the grey wooden shed he's turned into a home. A woman's adopted mother dies, reawakening childhood memories and grief. A couple's decision to move to an isolated location may just be their undoing. A young woman forms an unexpected connection at a summer school in Hungary.

Set in southern Tasmania, these interlinked stories bring into focus the inhabitants of small communities, and capture the moments when life turns and one person becomes another. With insight and empathy, Melissa Manning interrogates how the people we meet and the places we live shape the person we become.

275 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2021

Loading interface...
Loading interface...

About the author

Melissa Manning

8 books22 followers

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
171 (42%)
4 stars
178 (43%)
3 stars
49 (12%)
2 stars
8 (1%)
1 star
1 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
Profile Image for Mike.
930 reviews77 followers
February 23, 2022
Smokehouse is a compilation of interlinked short stories by debut novelist Australian Melissa Manning. Set in a small Tasmanian community, each tale features a different person and circumstance in life. Building a house, moving their family, a German immigrant, grief for a dead mother, memories of childhood, summer school and watching a boy in a playground reveal how people and places shape us. Despite the various narratives, there is a real consistency in the quality and allure of each character’s situation. Interestingly, a thematic contrast is also intimated between Tasmania’s main island and the smaller Bruny Island, as seen in the included sketch map. Although aptly capturing the Tasmanian landscape and wistful rhythm of life, this was an enjoyable read if only three-stars.
Profile Image for Andrea.
872 reviews30 followers
July 3, 2023
4.5 ★

This was an exquisite little gem of a book - I'm surprised it's not more well-known. Maybe the categorisation as an anthology of short stories puts off some readers? The thing is, the stories in this book fit together so well it's like the closest thing you can get to a novel, without actually being a novel! Set in and around Kettering, in the Channel area south of Hobart, each of the stories contain at least one character from another story, and the collection is bookended by a longer, 2-part story, the Smokehouse of the title. I mainly read the audiobook, which was great, but luckily I also had a text copy on hand (more on that later). The text edition contains some lovely title illustrations for each story, as well as a very handy map at the front for those unfamiliar with the area to orient themselves.

In Smokehouse Part 1, Tom and Nora leave the city behind to build a mudbrick home with a view in Kettering. Have they really thought it through though? Tom is gung-ho, enjoying the country life he can now gift to his two young daughters, but only when he's not escaping to Sydney for work, leaving Nora at home with the kids. Nora's had to sacrifice a lot for the move, and when her feet begin to itch for her former, bigger Hobart life, she realises how trapped she has become in this small town with no support network. Then she meets Ollie.

Boy is about Harry, from Bruny Island, as he finds out that he might have a son. A story of equal parts longing and fear.

Beginning in Germany, Leaven describes where Ollie came from and how he came to be living in Tasmania, literally a world away.

Stone fleshes out the story of Walde, the Polish stonemason who builds more than one fireplace in this book.

One of those fireplaces was for Lynn and Rob, who in Chainsaw are drifting apart - at first gradually and then suddenly - in the wake of a family tragedy.

In Faal, Gurj allows himself to be set up with Graham at the beginning of a long and loving relationship. Their first date takes place at 'Vanna's', where Graham has the Vindaloo, and since reading that I've been nostalgic for 1990s Vindaloo at Vanidol's!

Bruny is about an unfortunate fire at the island home of Tiny, Arlene and their daughter Rachel. When the house is marked for demolition, the family moves temporarily into a mudbrick home in Kettering.

One of my favourite stories, but with perhaps the most tenuous link to the others, was Nao. Nao's adoptive mother Sophie has died, and the grief is multiplied when it causes her to remember what it was like to lose her birth family as a teenager.

Finally, there is Smokehouse Part 2, where Nora and her family are all a lot older. The girls are adults, in fact. Nora is still in Kettering, but now she has a better support network in her good, close friends, Sal and Gurj. And she needs it because she is dealing with something much more difficult than raising 2 young children.

Thinking back to each of these stories warms my heart. My only hesitation in giving the book a full 5 star rating is something weird that has happened in publication. Firstly, the blurb refers to something that isn't in the book. Maybe there was an additional story that got cut fairly late in the piece? I can glean from both the blurb and 2 other stories a bit of what it would have been about, and I'm sure I would have liked to read it! Of much greater concern though, is the fact that the audiobook ends halfway through the final story. Luckily I had the text edition as well, because when I dived in to check something, I discovered I had a good hour or so of reading to do. And it was so important to both the story and to the book as a whole. I wondered if maybe it was user error with my library audiobook, so I re-borrowed it to check. No mistake. I struggle to think of a reason for this, but am thankful I was able to finish my Kettering sojourn the way it was intended.

Although the audiobook edition was great, and Zoe Carides is really easy to listen to, I can't recommend it for obvious reasons. But I urge anyone else with even the slightest interest to give (a text edition of) this book a try. You won't be disappointed.





Profile Image for Michael Livingston.
795 reviews281 followers
September 28, 2020
What a stunning, heartbreaking collection this is. It's brilliantly structured, book-ended by two long stories focussing on Nora, who moves to Kettering (outside Hobart) as her marriage is wobbling. These two pieces are stunning - beautiful and sad and deeply human. In between, the town of Kettering is fleshed out in a series of shorts, picking out characters and capturing small moments of their lives. They're lovely stories, but take on a more powerful resonance as the overlaps and connections become apparent. I went into this without any real expectations and it left me reeling - can't wait until everyone gets to read it in 2021!

(UQ Press sent me a freebie, so take my rave with a grain of salt I guess)
Profile Image for Bram.
Author 7 books159 followers
May 28, 2021
Astonishing. Quite possibly the best linked story collection I've ever read. The only other one that might be in contention is Continent by Jim Crace.
Profile Image for Gillian Hagenus.
29 reviews
June 1, 2021
Was thinking I would give this a four star...but then I read the last story and it absolutely broke me. This book is so achingly beautiful. Each story finds something tender and raw, at once taught and uplifting. The two bookended stories (the titular narrative) are no doubt the strongest, but I would argue that they cannot be experienced the same without all the stories in between. I dare any reader to come out of this emotionally unscathed. I dare any reader to come out of this not aching for the wild landscapes of Tasmania. This is a stunning debut and I eagerly await whatever comes next from Melissa Manning.
Profile Image for Cass Moriarty.
Author 2 books175 followers
May 12, 2021
Smokehouse (UQP 2021) by Melissa Manning is a wonderful, evocative collection of interconnected short stories that each stand alone, but that together add up to more than the sum of their parts – a novel-like narrative that focuses on individuals but in the end circles back to where it began, with a lovely connective symmetry.
The gorgeous cover image – a jar full of smoke – is a reference to the Smokehouse of the title, an actual smoking house for foods, particularly salmon, in the small town of Kettering in Tasmania. The owner of the smokehouse, Ollie, is not the first person we are introduced to, but he becomes central to the story. All of the stories are set in this rural community around this area in Tasmania, or on nearby Bruny Island.
The book opens and closes with tales of Nora, who has moved with her husband Tom and their two girls to a piece of land in Kettering, with plans to live in a caravan while their new home is being built, brick by brick. This first story is longer than most in the collection and serves to thoroughly immerse the reader in Nora’s world – her yearnings and desires, her regrets and disappointments. It is through this story that we are introduced to characters who will later feature in their own stories, although we don’t know it at the time. The middle section is a compilation of short narratives that expand on these minor characters briefly mentioned on the periphery of Nora’s life. And finally, the last story returns to Nora and her much changed life, bringing together the whole cast of people we have met. The Nora of the last story is a different woman from the one we first met; her situation has become almost unrecognisable and her own personality and circumstances are very different.
Besides the characters, the other aspect that joins these stories together is the themes. Grief, loss, disappointment, belonging, sacrifice, loyalty, betrayal, desire, shame, family and history are interwoven threads in each tale. The other theme that consistently resurfaces again and again is that of parents and children, of the separation of those relationships, the dynamics of loss, the flawed and messy act of parenting, the grief of children lost or estranged or sacrificed. This is the emotional centre of Smokehouse – the difficulties of family, the responsibility and weight of children, the balance between individual self-actualisation and placing the needs of others above your own.
It is also a book about the unexpected paths of life, the unimagined catastrophes, small and large, that creep upon us, or hit us suddenly, changing our sense of predetermination. In a collapsing concertina effect, we see characters in specific periods of their lives, not where they expected (or perhaps hoped) to be, struggling to accept their circumstances, or revelling in the joy to be found in risk-taking and change.
The writing is smart, tight and powerful, the characters are compelling and engaging, and the narrative is thoughtful and compassionate. Smokehouse is a remarkable book.
Profile Image for Tyh.
32 reviews4 followers
May 2, 2021
I actually can't fault this book at all. I'm usually ruthless (even books I love get 3 stars) but I can't think of a single reason to take a star off. This is a gorgeously crafted book, it's well written, the characters are real and it's heartbreaking. I read it in two sittings, and I have two little kids so that's a basically impossible task.
Profile Image for Karen.
513 reviews
September 25, 2021
Wow, simply wow. I really enjoyed this book which is billed as a collection of interlinked stories set in southern Tasmania. However, bookended by two longer pieces centered around Nora, it is almost a cohesive story brought together masterfully by the final chapter.

I cannot believe this is a debut work. The writing is beautiful and the journeys through various types of loss and grief are superbly rendered. From page one I felt I was a part of the lives of these characters and this community. I felt their joy and their pain.

In recent years there have been some amazing authors whose roots lie in Tasmania and Melissa Manning is another to add to this list. This is a wonderful book that I cannot recommend highly enough and I look forward to what comes next from this very talented writer.
Profile Image for SS.
257 reviews2 followers
May 21, 2023
Several vaguely inter-linked stories (my concentration in the middle of the book waned, so they might be better linked than I can recall) set in Tasmania.

The story that starts the book is captivating, a slow burn but by the end of the story, at the beginning of the book, I just wanted to know the characters more and sit with them on their journey. This is where the book moves to the next story, which I didn't want to participate in because of my want for more of the first.

The book thankfully returns to the first story, much later in the central characters' lives, but a blessing to return to them nonetheless. This main story, which I enjoyed the most, was about love and the path that our lives take through its peaks and troughs.

Listened as audiobook
Profile Image for Louise.
452 reviews
May 21, 2022
This is a fine collection of short stories bookended by a novella which gives the collection its name. I am not sure if it is common to combine stories in this way but in Melissa Manning's debut suite of stories the device works well.

All the stories in Smokehouse are set in modern day Tasmania with several of the characters featuring in more than one story. I particularly admired the two part novella with its tender and heartbreaking love story. Another favourite story highlights the resilience and adaptability of a young victim of the Japanese tsunami who, through the support and nurturing afforded by her new family and community, begins to come to terms with her traumatic past.
Profile Image for Jaclyn.
Author 60 books673 followers
February 16, 2021
I enjoyed the clean prose style but was not in the mood for more sad short stories (and a novella).
Profile Image for Rebecca Fraser.
Author 33 books50 followers
January 19, 2022
Smokehouse is a beautifully written, emotionally-weighted study of love and loss, and landscape. Highly recommended if you love accessible writing, complex characters, realism, and Tasmania's stunning south coast.
Profile Image for nina.reads.books.
505 reviews17 followers
September 14, 2023
Smokehouse by Melissa Manning is a collection of interlinked short stories all set in Tasmania. The short stories are bookended by a larger story (a novella?) that is broken into two parts. The titular Smokehouse Part 1 focuses on Nora who with her husband and two girls moves to a block of land in Kettering where they slowly build a house and for better or worse set up new lives in the community. When Nora meets the owner of the smokehouse on the next door property all their lives are changed.

Following this story a series of much smaller stories flow seemingly randomly through time each focussing on a different member of the community. Finally Smokehouse Part 2 brings Nora’s story to a close.

Honestly I found this to be such beautifully poetic writing. The stories are moving and so human with the small town community feel really shining through. I loved the small links between characters in the stories which were often only a single offhand sentence. The landscape of Tasmania was also beautifully rendered. Gosh we have some incredible Tasmania born writer here in Australia! There really seems to be something magical about the way many writers are able to describe the landscape down there. Definitely makes me want to go for a visit.

The stories are not happy ones but while there is sadness there is also hope. You won’t be cheered by these stories but you will be moved.

I listened to Smokehouse on audio which I found incredibly satisfying. It was voiced by Australian actress Zoe Carides and she was great. I’d highly recommend this one if you are interested in Australian based short stories. Manning is a talent and I’m excited to see what else she writes!
Profile Image for Malcolm.
167 reviews5 followers
June 28, 2023
Both parts of Smokehouse plus Nao are brilliant and worth the cost of entry. While the other short stories work in adding depth to other characters in the Kettering / Bruny community, they didn’t work as well and kept this collection from being a 5 star read for me. Still, do yourself a favour and enjoy sinking into Tasmania’s wonderful Channel district for a while.
Profile Image for Perseus Q.
73 reviews5 followers
August 31, 2021
I love Tasmanian gothic as much as the next weirdo, but this wasn’t that. This was sad Tasmanians being sad; and grief-porn. I don’t like grief porn. You know when Australian Story do close-ups of people being sad and play tinkering sad piano music? This was like that but a whole book of it. Many will love this book and I do not begrudge them. It’s just not for me.

Beautifully written, but.
25 reviews
March 31, 2022
I quite liked this book. The setting, the relationships, the portrayal of dementia and its effect on the partner was in some parts beautifully written. It was a little disjointed for me in that the story didn't flow quite as well as I would have liked.
66 reviews
August 6, 2022
I really enjoyed this book . Set in Tasmania , a series of short stories that intertwine . Each story tells an interesting tale of how life develops and evolves for various characters that overlap. Very realistic and humanly touching and relevant as we age.
Profile Image for David McDonald.
66 reviews1 follower
July 8, 2021
Sometimes it’s nice to read a book just for the sake of reading. A book without serial killers, psychopaths, rape, painful psychological trauma, and existential philosophical enlightenment.

Smokehouse still has its tragedies, yet they are normalised as inevitable life events.

This is a gentle story, exploring notions of how people and place define who we are. Melissa doesn’t rely on scathing character examination to drive her narrative. The story follows different individuals, and families, from different origins, and weaves their journeys into the landscape of Southwest Tasmania.

Melissa hasn’t produced a seminal piece of literary genius here, but to me that doesn’t necessarily matter. Smokehouse is a book to read whilst sitting in your garden, with a fresh hot coffee and homemade banana bread.
Profile Image for S.C. Karakaltsas.
Author 5 books27 followers
January 21, 2022
Smokehouse is a book of linked stories set in southern Tasmania, more particularly, the region around Kettering and Bruny Island.

I visited this region only a few years ago and it’s a stunning landscape of rugged beauty. And Melissa Manning not only paints the landscape but she fully immerses the reader right into it.

“She walked down to the beach, sat in the sand throwing shells into the frothy swash of waves, and considered whether all of this might be a sign that it was a time to move on.”

The book begins with the title story Smokehouse Part 1 which is almost a novella about Joy, who with her husband builds a mud-brick home, a dream home away from the bustle of Hobart. Her new life begins to fracture and the consequences of her actions resonate not only on her family but within the small community around her.

“She had never expected to feel so absent, as though her identity had bled out into the fabric of their family. She longed to feel the margins of herself.”

The last story Smokehouse Part Two, set in Joy’s future, gives us a glimpse into her life as an older woman. In between are short stories whose characters link with the community or Joy’s life.

There was a lot I enjoyed. There is a tenderness in the tragedy and trauma. The reference to food brings joy and pain. “… she dished field mushrooms onto her side plate and ate them with her fingers, let the juices run own her chin and into her lap and tried not to think about the night to come."

Each story is beautifully written and evocative. The characters are rich in detail and drawn so fully, you feel you know them, their pain, their joy and the problems they encounter. Manning treats the characters and the themes of grief, sorrow, health decline and loss with empathy and dignity.

I thoroughly enjoyed this and am not surprised it was shortlisted in 2021 for Queensland Literary Awards as well as Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. It's a stunning debut by an extraordinary author. Highly recommend this one.
Profile Image for Sally Piper.
Author 3 books56 followers
May 30, 2021
Smokehouse is an insightful collection of interconnected short stories, book-ended by Part 1 & 2 of a novella, that also reads like a novel - the best kind of hybrid. Set on the southern Tasmanian coast with Bruny Island as a backdrop, Smokehouse charts the intersecting lives of a small coastal community over time where the landscape is as beautiful, harsh and unpredictable as the experiences of those who live there. Everything about this collection shows a writer with a deep and imaginative understanding for what it is to love and to fail and to repair.
Profile Image for Lisa Bacon-hall.
353 reviews1 follower
May 26, 2021
Stunning first novel from Melissa Manning. I loved the stories highlighting characters, then shifting to another set of characters. She weaves the stories together in a beautiful way, I was engaged and interested in all the characters in her novel and how she used Nora from the first character’s story we begin with to use her to bookend the novel. It was a delightful read and my best so far this year!
Profile Image for Emma Darragh.
132 reviews19 followers
Read
June 18, 2023
Gorgeous story cycle (or "linked stories"). Some really gorgeous images, poignant moments, and lovely characters. Faal was my favourite but Smokehouse Part 2 hit me pretty hard, too 😭😭😭
1,023 reviews
April 12, 2022
Absolutely beautiful! A worthy winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction 2022, Manning’s interconnected collection of short stories caught life-changing moments for her southern Tasmanian characters. Included among her stunning life portraits was Tasmania itself, the stark beauty of its rural areas, its ruggedness, and its challenges. Characters in the small communities she explored were intensely affected by the relationships they cultivated and the places they inhabited. Manning brilliantly recorded their thoughts, conveyed their emotions, and revealed the life decisions that impacted them.

Rarely have I felt so connected to characters and so moved by the joys and struggles they experienced. The collection was bookended by two stories focused on Nora, each story portraying her at a crucial stage of her life, each story capturing her strength and vulnerability as her life took her in unexpected directions, first as a young wife and mother and then as an older woman wondering “who she might become next.”

Manning’s observations were detailed and intense, allowing her readers to connect with both the joy and the pain of her characters as they celebrated and mourned. The stories conveyed an “earthy, tangible sense of place” and powerfully projected a cast of richly drawn characters deeply affected by the people and places around them.
Profile Image for Sandra.
1,059 reviews23 followers
April 13, 2021
3.5 stars

'Outside, the pre-dawn calls of wattlebirds counted out her heartbeats, like the notes of an ancient song.'

This book is a collection of interconnected short stories that focus on a small community in Southern Tasmania, Kettering. The immigrant experience, people's desire to live a country life and the intimacy and strain of family life is captured here.

The first story called 'The Smoke house ' begins with married couple Tom, Nora and their 2 girls Trudie and Lara, leave their established suburban home for a property in Kettering. They begin by living in a caravan while their house is being built. Nora is haunted by a sense of dissatisfaction as she feels a lost of identity in her marriage. She notices a smoke house on the neighbouring property and when she finally meets her neighbour it begins a catalyst of change.

I feel like people who enjoyed Reservoir 13 would like this novel of gentle but poignant short stories that explore the community and vibe of the people who live in this remote part of Australia.
Profile Image for Emkoshka.
1,758 reviews7 followers
May 29, 2022
This came to me through many glowing recommendations in the ABC Book Club group on Facebook, and because it's a book of short stories set in Tasmania (two drawcards for me this year), I had to give it a go. Alas, I didn't love it, and was relieved to finish. It felt a little like the Tasmanian version of Olive Kitteridge, with a lot of stories of pain and loss and suffering set in a small community, with characters popping up in each other's stories. It was a little too white, middle-class for me (with the exception of a gay Indian character and a Japanese exchange student); I much preferred Adam Thompson's collection Born Into This for a fresh and different take on Tassie lives.
35 reviews
February 21, 2023
Put simply, this is an outstanding novel. Brilliantly structured with wonderfully developed characters, dialogue, messages and stories that will resonate with so many people, either through their direct or indirect experiences.

There’s a recurring theme that is focussed around ‘life choices and destiny fulfilment’. It’s highly thought provoking and a variety of scenarios play out through the novel which is comprised of different stories that are linked. It’s a very clever approach.

Thought provoking, raw, sad, unsettling and uplifting. This is a must read.

Melissa Manning, I sincerely hope this is not your first and last novel. That would be an absolute tragedy.
Congratulations and thank you.
Profile Image for Alistair.
817 reviews6 followers
January 29, 2022
This collection consists of 7 stories bookended by two longer stories, entitled Smokehouse: part one and Smokehouse: part two. These are the real gems. Manning writes with immensely impressive insight and empathy. The two halves of Smokehouse follow the disintegration of a family and its subsequent resurrection. After I’d finished I realised there was quite a deal of heartbreak in many of the stories, but don’t let this put you off. Manning writes with such authenticity and grace that it does not feel like a depressing book. A very good debut.
Profile Image for Jim Rimmer.
167 reviews14 followers
February 15, 2022
Smokehouse leapt out at me from the winners list of the recent Victorian Premier's Literary Awards so I quickly wandered down to my nearest independent bookshop and picked-up a copy.

Melissa Manning's powerful collection of interwoven stories is beautifully written, filled with heart, and heart-ache. It's a book that is incredibly immersive - very real, sensory, familiar. Having finished this title earlier today I can already tell it will continue to smoulder in my consciousness for quite a while yet.

Give it a go.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.