In Stained Glass Lives, Louise Worthington’s writing fuses poetry and prose, beauty, and violence. Sometimes, tender, sometimes harsh, she explores loss, female power, and the power of distorted thought, as well as creating stark portraits of family, violence, and revenge. 

The characters are flawed and visceral, from ghosts, daughters, mothers, wives, to taxi drivers, teachers, a frail widow, and a mercenary shop assistant. 

From the delightful insight into aging in "Visitors", gently humorous at the same time as pulling at the heart strings, to the unexpected gruesome climax in Humming, the hilarious yet humiliating embarrassment in Red Swimsuit, the sumptuous words to complement the themes in Reflections from an Epicure, to Beauty, brief but beautiful in its poignancy, reminiscent in some ways, of The Velveteen Rabbit, we are taken on a journey of words, phrases, and themes which make up our diverse, varied, chaotic, and changeable lives.