Stories - Hardcover

Jolley, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670821136 ISBN 13: 9780670821136

Publisher: Viking, 1988

Synopsis

Stories from two previous collections, "Fire Acre Virgin" and "The Travelling Entertainer," are combined in a volume that includes an autobiographical piece describing the people and things that have influenced the author

About this title

Reviews

First published in the author's native Australia, these selections consist of two parts, "Five Acre Virgin" and "The Travelling Entertainer." In the first, 11 stories reveal the bases of Jolley's memorable novel, The Newspaper of Claremont Street. Recalling the characters' early life in the country, the narrator describes her childhood with her mother and older brother, a petty thief, capturing them in poignant but raffishly comic situations. The 10 entries in the second section illuminate the plight of loners in big cities. "Winter Nelis" concerns self-alienated Leonora, roused from her lethargy when she sees her young neighbor Mrs. Banks in tears, in her distress dropping a bag of russet pears called Nelis. Subtle allusions to Leonora's past seem to explain the curiosity that drives her to find out why Mrs. Banks was weeping. Jolley appends "A Child Went Forth," an account of her growth as a writer in which one discovers, as she has, the recurrent theme of exile in her works. The author also trusts readers to look beneath the surface for profound meanings in stories whose ambiguities and implications stir the imagination.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In these 21 stories, prize-winning Australian author Jolley reveals to us the quiet lives of ordinary people at conflict with their environment, delinquent children, older relatives, marriage partners, and even squatters, as painfully aware of their failures as their dreams. Her characters range from single mothers to traveling salesmen, wood cutters, immigrants, and charwomen, all of whose lives overlap like patchwork quilting. The background to these stories is always Australia, but the conflicts are universal, and they are communicated to us with a sparseness of language that could be Chekov's, with the pleasing gentleness of a Barbara Pym. Ruth Moose, Pfeiffer Coll. Lib., Misenheimer,
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670821136
• ISBN 13: 9780670821136
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312