Cusack's classic that broke new ground in its treatment of the values of present-day Australia and in its picture of the changing Aboriginal world. For Tempe Caxton, glamorous television star, life has lost its lustre. Her son was killed in the war, her lover has walked out on her, her job is over and life seems meaningless. Suicide seems to promise an easy way out. While recovering from a failed attempt, she discovers a surprising secret in the pages of her dead son's diary - she has a granddaughter. And she soon finds out that her grandchild is in trouble - the family that have raised her are being unfairly evicted from the land they have held for four generations. Gradually Tempe is pulled into an alien world, with a new purpose; she is forced to rethink her long-held prejudices, fight for principles she has never before thought about, and find a new reason for living.
Is it worse to be exiled from one's country than from one's heart? Alexandra, an acerbic writer of popular travel books, is leaving Australia on the Boudicea. Tortured by the early death of her beloved sister in childbirth, she has long been a lone observer of the foibles of others. To her dismay, she finds that the cabin she has booked is to be shared by the young, vibrant Vicky - an all too potent reminder of her sister. Vicky, a talented artist, is on her way to study in London. She and Alexandra are soon the centre of a pleasant shipboard group. But things change when a crowd of West Indians board in Jamaica. Vicky finds herself in an unpleasant situation after she dances with one of the new arrivals, Olumide, and prejudice rears its ugly head. In London, Alexandra realises she is no longer content living life as a detached observer. She watches as Vicky and Olumide's friendship deepens. But the young lovers are gradually forced to face a grim reality - where can they make a home that lets them live in freedom?
A compassionate and perceptive story of a woman's effort to escape from the nightmare of alcohol addiction. Uncertain of herself, vulnerable, Roslyn is a woman who needs people - and who needs to feel that people need her. But her husband Rod, an officer in the Australian Navy, is often away at sea, and her daughter, grown up and preoccupied with her studies and her boyfriend, comes only rarely to see her. Imagining slights where perhaps none exist, and feeling herself cold-shouldered by the other naval wives and shunned by the tenants in her Sydney block of flats, Roslyn starts drinking to console herself on her lonely evenings at home, unaware that what is at first only a harmless temporary escape from barren reality will grow into a need, and then into an overpowering obsession...
Autobiographical account of the inter-world-war years spent by novelist Cusack (author of TCome in Spinner') teaching in country New South Wales. The editor, compiler of the TBibliography of Australian Women's Literature', includes an extensive commentary on and bibliography of Cusack.
Dymphna Cusack, Miles Franklin and Florence James come alive on these pages through their friendships, their aspirations, their passions and achievements, their disappointments, insecurities and triumphs. In Yarn Spinners Marilla North tells the tale of their personal and professional lives through their correspondence, meticulously curated, edited and woven together with subtle narrative links." ... from the Preface by Mary Kostakidis "Editing is too modest a word for what Marilla North has done in this trove of letters, artfully assembled from thousands she recovered in a labour extending over 12 years. She has topped and tailed and interwoven them, then filled the gaps with narrative and notes, and in the process created a unique literary form. As the story flows from one to the other, the effect is, as North hoped, like a novel with three unfailingly lively female characters." Barry Oakley
An acclaimed novel which explores what life on the home-front was like for Australian women in WWII. "Come in Spinner" was an immediate sensation when it was first published in an abridged version in 1951. Florence James was the author of "Come in Spinner" and a book for children. Dymphna Cusack was the author of 12 novels including "Pioneers on Parade" which she co-authored with Miles Franklin.
When Dymphna Stella Rees finds bundles of love letters buried in her parents' archive, she is intrigued by the discovery. Leslie Rees and Coralie Clarke Rees were a power couple of the Australian literary scene in the mid-twentieth century. They took their shared dream of being writers from Perth to London and launched themselves in Fleet Street, interviewing some of the century's literary greats, including James Joyce, AA Milne, and George Bernard Shaw. After settling in Sydney in the 1930s, they embraced the city's vibrant arts scene and established prolific careers. Leslie became an award-winning children's book author and the ABC's national drama editor, while Coralie was one of the country's first female broadcasters. They influenced the development of an authentically Australian arts culture and included among their friends Mary Gilmore, Ruth Park, D'Arcy Niland, Mary Durack and Vance and Nettie Palmer. Drawn from personal notebooks, letters and original transcripts, A Paper Inheritance is the engrossing story of what drove this literary couple to prominence and is a celebration of their love and their passion for words.
Love, life, writing and friendship are the intimate subjects of letters between three intelligent, witty women who shared a passionate commitment to Australian literature. These carefully selected letters tell a story that reads like a novel. Their correspondence - from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s - reveals their public battles as well as their private ones. Their personal conflicts are a microcosm of Australian society's struggles over the period.
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