Description
Widowed after a long marriage, Dorelia MacCraith swaps the family home for a house with a tower, and there, raised above the run of daily life, sets out to rewrite the stories of old women poorly treated by literature. Throughout this winding story, Dorelia and the elderly artist Elizabeth Bunting are sustained by a friendship that reaches back to their years at art school, and bonded by the secrets of a six-month period when they painted together in France. The loneliness of not belonging, of being cut adrift by grief, betrayal, or old age, binds these twelve connected stories into a dazzling composite novel. Within its complex crossings and connections, young and old inhabit separate yet overlapping firmaments; grown children, though loved and loving, cannot imagine their parents' young lives. For most, the past is not past, but exerts a magnetic pull, while future happiness hinges on retreat, or escape.
About the Author
Carol Lefevre holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide, where she is a Visiting Research Fellow. Her novel Nights in the Asylum, Picador (UK) and Vintage (Australia) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, won the 2008 Nita B. Kibble Award for Women Writers, and the Peoples Choice Award. If You Were Mine (2008) was published by Vintage. She has published short fiction, essays, and journalism, and a non-fiction book, Quiet City: walking in West Terrace Cemetery (2016, Wakefield Press). Her most recent book Murmurations, a novella in eight stories (2020, Spinifex Press) was shortlisted for the 2021 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premiers Literary Awards, and the Fiction Prize in the 2022 South Australian Festival Awards for Literature. Carol continues to publish essays and short fiction, and contributes occasional seminars to the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.
Reviews
"A perfect mosaic of women's lives and rooms lit by sinuous, perceptive writing." --Susan Wyndham, former Sydney Morning Herald Literary Editor "Stories of tenderness and compassion, with a keen eye for the telling detail. Rich in sentiment but always free of sentimentality, refusing easy judgements and neat endings, what ultimately endures is the power of female friendship and the desire to create beauty through the making of art, and in the spaces of everyday life." --Susan Midalia, author, Everyday Madness
Book Information
ISBN 9781925950625
Author Carol Lefevre
Format Paperback
Page Count 300
Imprint Spinifex Press
Publisher Spinifex Press
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 15mm
About the Author
Carol Lefevre holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide, where she is a Visiting Research Fellow. Her novel Nights in the Asylum, Picador (UK) and Vintage (Australia) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, won the 2008 Nita B. Kibble Award for Women Writers, and the Peoples Choice Award. If You Were Mine (2008) was published by Vintage. She has published short fiction, essays, and journalism, and a non-fiction book, Quiet City: walking in West Terrace Cemetery (2016, Wakefield Press). Her most recent book Murmurations, a novella in eight stories (2020, Spinifex Press) was shortlisted for the 2021 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premiers Literary Awards, and the Fiction Prize in the 2022 South Australian Festival Awards for Literature. Carol continues to publish essays and short fiction, and contributes occasional seminars to the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.
Reviews
"A perfect mosaic of women's lives and rooms lit by sinuous, perceptive writing." --Susan Wyndham, former Sydney Morning Herald Literary Editor "Stories of tenderness and compassion, with a keen eye for the telling detail. Rich in sentiment but always free of sentimentality, refusing easy judgements and neat endings, what ultimately endures is the power of female friendship and the desire to create beauty through the making of art, and in the spaces of everyday life." --Susan Midalia, author, Everyday Madness
Book Information
ISBN 9781925950625
Author Carol Lefevre
Format Paperback
Page Count 300
Imprint Spinifex Press
Publisher Spinifex Press
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 15mm
