"Of Books and Covers: Peter Cowan," in Overland, No. 114, May, 1989, pp. 58-62.

In the following excerpt, Bennett examines the minimalist attributes of Cowan's short story collection Voices, concluding that "few writers have used human voices more skillfully to explore the tensions between male and female set against the changing expectations of society."

Without the trappings of normal narrative conventions, such as authorial commentary or explanation, or even quotation marks to denote direct speech, Cowan's voices . . . speak unclothed, as if out of the darkness. They seem bare of eccentric clothing, mannerisms, the colorful paraphernalia of conventional notions of 'character'. The effect is to light up a corner of the self or its society, to show something of the play of light and shade that comprise the experience of living.

For darkness is of course a metaphoric quality, as Sigmund Freud recognised when he referred to the unconscious as the...