Description: "Protagonist Dora's children are always at the back of her mind, at the fore. She has her eccentricities and multiplicities, and grave faults. As in all Kaaron Warren's delightful but grim stories she borrows from something relatable. She reaches for the uncanny in the everyday, makes it stranger yet. Into Bones Like Oil is no deviant from this ingenious author's modus operandi--she finds the fear she wants to explore, here taking a parent's panic and extrapolating it. Warren is a mother who learnt to steal time standing at the stove cooking bolognaise sauce, stirring with one hand, writing with the other--she understands parental instinct and lures you with it. Narrated from Dora's perspective, the text is clear, patient in its scene setting. It doesn't draw attention to horror, but it is there: a haunting at the back or fore of your mind, inside a sunken building full of dilapidation. The house sat quiet at 6am--there is a strong sense of place. Dora's room is so tiny, it's like a grave. Corridor walls are full of shipwreck paintings. Everything is pale or sickly coloured. And even here, the author charms you, hoodwinks you. At your most ease, as you snuggle into your cushion, Warren tenders a fresh perspective to horror: It is not the sight of a severed hand or a head full of seaweed lolling on the ground. It's the gazing at a house next door, the one with a curled cat on the wall. And there's a child's tricycle asunder by the flowerpots. And walking boots out the door that's ajar. Sounds of washing in the kitchen. A waft of pie... But you blink and you're not sure it's a memory, because all you see is a sealed-up well smothered with moss. Warren stirs awake an everyday fear that comes at you one hundred and one ways. And it's not a premonition because it is realised a billion times in a heart full of love. An accomplished story that is most unsettling." -- Eugen Bacon , Aurealis Magazine

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