The Sugar Mother - Softcover

Jolley, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0892553626 ISBN 13: 9780892553624

Publisher: Persea, 2010

Synopsis

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year: a witty and sophisticated classic by one of Australia's most daring and entertaining novelists.

Edwin Page, a fussy middle-aged professor, no sooner bids farewell to his obstetrician wife, Cecilia, who accepted a fellowship abroad, when his new neighbors, Mrs. Botts and her sexy, twentyish daughter, Leila, arrive. Since they're locked out of their house, Edwin invites them in-and then can't get them to leave. He becomes obsessed with Leila and convinces himself that she is a perfect surrogate mother for the childless Cecilia. "Wickedly amusing . . . subversive" (New York Times Book Review), The Sugar Mother undoes the institution of marriage.

About this title

About the Author:

Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007) is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers, with a formidable international reputation, and during the 1980s and 1990s was widely acclaimed with a wide readership in the U. S. Born in England in 1923, she was brought up in a strict, German-speaking household and attended a Quaker boarding school. She became a nurse, married, and with three children moved to Western Australia in 1959. Although she wrote all her life, it was not until she was in her fifties that her books started to receive the recognition they deserved. Her work won every major award in Australia, and was several times selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Excerpts from her novels (including Cabin Fever, Book 2 in the Trilogy) were published in The New Yorker. Her novels include The Sugar Mother, Foxybaby, Miss Peabody's Inheritance, and Mr. Scobie's Riddle. Elizabeth Jolley died in 2007.

From Publishers Weekly:

Jolley's latest novel (after Palomino) is again set in her native Australia but could take place anywhere. Edwin, a pedantic and in many ways childish 54-year-old professor of literature, has been left a grass widower for a year. His obstetrician wife Cecilia has taken a sabbatical trip to Europe, leaving him to the care of their circle of friends, a group of gently swinging couples. Almost before he knows it, Edwin is taken over by his new next-door neighbors, Leila Bott and her mother, a pandering, inquisitive woman who distinctly resembles Mrs. Malaprop. In fact, they somehow move in on poor Edwin and take over his house. But it is futile to pity him: Edwin is the author of all his troubles. . But it is when Mrs. Bott suggests that Leila act as a "sugar" (for "surrogate") mother that common sense truly flies out the door. The novel is full of unexpected jokes and surprisesone of which is the unconventional behavior of its well-limned, subtly drawn middle-aged characters. The reader is often uncertain about which events have occurred outside Edwin's mind and which inside it, but this doesn't matter: the sheer fun of Jolley's writing and her lighthearted yet serious lesson that not even the old are predictable make this a pleasure to reador even read out loud.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Persea
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0892553626
• ISBN 13: 9780892553624
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224