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Fiction

Quick punch

An uncomfortable novel

Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere by Alex Cothren

by Debra Adelaide
September 2025, no. 479

Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere by Alex Cothren

Pink Shorts Press, $32.99 pb, 176 pp

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

In an instance of delicious wit, a new South Australian publisher is called Pink Shorts Press. That Pink Shorts Press has chosen a satirical collection as one of its first titles represents an almost perfect alliance. The only potential fly in this unctuous ointment is the question resounding across the world at the moment: how, as an author, does one challenge reality, distort the facts, and subvert the narrative, when currently one person dominates most of the work traditionally ascribed to satirical creatives?

 


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Playing Nice Was Getting Me Nowhere by Alex Cothren

Pink Shorts Press, $32.99 pb, 176 pp

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.


From the New Issue

Letters – October 2025

by Eli McLean, Theodore Ell, Ben Brooker, et al.

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