There are some writers whose style is so distinctive they can be identified from a single paragraph. Sydney writer Debra Adelaide is more of a chameleon. Letter to George Clooney is Adelaide’s first short story collection. She has previously written three novels and edited several anthologies. Her first novel, The Hotel Albatross (1995), is the meandering tale of a couple trying to run a country hotel. The second, Serpent Dust (1998), reimagines (with a hint of magic realism) the arrival of smallpox in colonial Australia, while the third, the brilliant The Household Guide to Dying (2008), is a moving and darkly funny narrative of a woman with terminal cancer and her unusually pragmatic approach to dying.