Caitlin Farrugia, Search Histories

Google is our friend, our guide and our priest. With 8.5 billion Google searches everyday, 99,000 happening right this second, we are a symphony of the stressed and self-pitying, constantly asking for validation and reassurance. This collection is what it means to be alive today even if it’s, Where will my money go if I have no family? or Ed Sheeran hair.

Genre-defying, raucous and elliptical, Search Histories is a collection of short (short) prose about what people google in a specific time of their lives, however significant or mundane. Epigrammatic, wicked, and hilarious, composed only of what people might have typed into Google, this book is a look at our fears, existential wonders, suffering and inconsequential streams of consciousness. This collection of vignettes shows just how boring but funny the monotony of everyday life is through characters dealing with identity struggle, loneliness, burnout, financial stress, strained relationships, spiralling worry, sadness and desperation. Search Histories is all about humanity’s insecurities, Do chicks like dudes in leather jackets, curiosities, pics of boobs women, and vulnerabilities, Has anyone else said sorry to a chair leg before reddit. In a time of capitalising on our hobbies and incessant self-curation, private Google searches are perhaps the closest we get to a real portrayal of a person. Mostly funny, at times sad because it’s true, Search Histories shows that people today are chronic overthinkers desperately hunting for the answers to: Who am I and is it ok?

There is the laughter of recognition as insecurities and oddities pop up that many of us have either searched for online or thought about searching. There is the utter delight of wild searches from people we will never know but about whose lives we gain hilarious insight. The collection is equally moving. Mini narratives around loss and grief, anxiety and hope are heart-achingly poignant. Yet there is nothing sentimental or saccharine in this work. It is a documentation of human yearning and our very real vulnerabilities. Emilie Collyer

Caitlin Farrugia is a dark comedy writer and school teacher for education reform. Fascinated by people’s choices, behaviours, and (lack of) self-awareness, as well as intergenerational everything and absurdism. Her work is always about people and their everyday experiences that are often mundane but relatable. Mostly everything is funny, mostly everything is sad. Search Histories is her debut collection.

Caitlin Farrugia, Search Histories
2024. 148mm x 210mm. 112pp.
ISBN 978-1-925735-63-5

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.