Amy's Children - Hardcover

Masters, Olga

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393025748 ISBN 13: 9780393025743

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1988

Synopsis

Unable to cope with the burdens of motherhood and poverty, twenty-one-year-old Amy Fowler leaves her Outback village for Sydney, where she reconstructs her life until the past returns in the form of her eldest daughter who comes to live with her

About this title

About the Author

Olga Masters was born in rural Australia in 1919. Her first job, at seventeen, was at a local newspaper, where the editor encouraged her writing. She married at twenty-one and had seven children, working part-time as a journalist for papers such as the Sydney Morning Herald, leaving her little opportunity to develop her interest in writing fiction until she was in her fifties.

In the 1970s Masters wrote a radio play and a stage play, and between 1977 and 1981 she won a series of prizes for her short stories. Her debut collection, The Home Girls, won a National Book Council Award in 1983. It was followed by a novel, Loving Daughters, which was highly commended for the same award. Her next books, the linked stories A Long Time Dying and the novel Amy’s Children, met with critical acclaim. This brief but highly prolific period ended when Masters died, following a short illness, in 1986. She had been at work on The Rose Fancier, a posthumously published collection of stories. Reporting Home, a selection of Masters’ extensive journalism, was published in 1990. A street in Canberra bears her name.
Eva Hornung lives in South Australia. Writing as Eva Sallis, she won the Australian/Vogel and Dobbie awards her first novel, Hiam.Mahjar won the Steele Rudd Award and The Marsh Birds won the Asher Literary Award. Her most recent novel, Dog Boy, won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction and, in Sweden, the Stora Ljudbokspriset.

Review

A beautiful little book, written with great gentleness and warmth.’
Courier Mail

Olga Masters writes with freshness and brimming exuberance, and yet control over her material is absolute Amy’s Children is a polished, moving story, one that touches the very roots of being and feeling without the barest hint of cliche.’
John Carroll, Age

Amy’s Children offers a delightfully wicked view of female values and culture.’
Bulletin

In Amy’s Children Masters has changed her background from rural to urban without changing her essential territory the intense and private lives of women and girls.'
Adelaide Advertiser

Masters’ best work [It] captures in photorealist detail the peeling facades of the inner city during the years when the Depression was supplanted by war What makes this quiet novel so remarkable? Partly it is the language, as regular and minutely exact as Amy’s aunt’s hand-sewn buttonholes. But the real magic lies in the way such words are deployed The sense of loss that pervades this final work is palpable.
Geordie Williamson

Polished, subtle and sustained. A classic Australian novel.’
Eva Hornung

'It’s a wonderful, warm, life-affirming book.'
Swiftly Tilting Planet


‘A beautiful little book, written with great gentleness and warmth.’
Courier Mail

‘Olga Masters writes with freshness and brimming exuberance, and yet control over her material is absolute...Amy’s Children is a polished, moving story, one that touches the very roots of being and feeling without the barest hint of cliche.’
John Carroll, Age

‘Amy’s Children offers a delightfully wicked view of female values and culture.’
Bulletin

‘In Amy’s Children Masters has changed her background from rural to urban without changing her essential territory―the intense and private lives of women and girls.'
Adelaide Advertiser

‘Masters’ best work...[It] captures in photorealist detail the peeling facades of the inner city during the years when the Depression was supplanted by war...What makes this quiet novel so remarkable? Partly it is the language, as regular and minutely exact as Amy’s aunt’s hand-sewn buttonholes. But the real magic lies in the way such words are deployed...The sense of loss that pervades this final work is palpable.‘
Geordie Williamson

‘Polished, subtle and sustained. A classic Australian novel.’
Eva Hornung

'It’s a wonderful, warm, life-affirming book.'
Swiftly Tilting Planet

Edition details

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393025748
• ISBN 13: 9780393025743
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1