Signs of Life *Ockham 2024 Longlist*

Christchurch, post quakes, and the earth is still settling. Containers line the damaged streets, whose inhabitants waver - like their city - suspended between disaster and recovery. Tony, very much alive, is declared dead, Gerald misreads one too many situations in his community patrol, and boomer Carla tries online dating. At the epicentre of these taut, magnetic stories is twenty-something Flick who, just as she is finding her feet again, faces another violent disruption - this time in human form - while her mostly-ex gets set to marry. Keenly observed and deftly humorous, Signs of Life turns on the smallest of details to tell the biggest of stories: how we carry on. 'Through the rubble of Amy Head's pungent, post-quake Christchurch flickers Flick, a young woman trying to make sense of a terrible event and its endless aftermath. In her pages it all comes back, uneasily, but also with brief moments of beauty, little eruptions of comedy. Life wins out, in the end, in this bright and original piece of discontinuous fiction - a fine tribute to everyone who survived, to those who didn't, and to the form it's written in.' -Patrick Evans