Search results for ""author carol lefevre""

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.

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For the first time since he'd left the island he thought of the starlings massed at dusk in the winter trees behind the children's home. He remembered the rustle of their wings when they twisted in skeins over the fields, or swelled and contracted high above the cliffs, dark wave after dark wave, lifting and falling in a kind of dance. Sister Lucy had said it was a murmuration. He was still quite young, and he had thought the birds were showing him a sign, that there was something written in their fluid patterns. Lives merge and diverge; they soar and plunge, or come to rest in impenetrable silence. Erris Cleary's absence haunts the pages of this exquisite novella, a woman who complicates other lives yet confers unexpected blessings. Fly far, be free, urges Erris. Who can know why she smashes mirrors? Who can say why she does not heed her own advice? Among the sudden shifts and swings, the swerving flight paths taken, something hidden must be uncovered, something dark and rotten, even evil, which has masqueraded as normality. In the end it will be a writer's task to reclaim Erris, to bear witness, to sound in fiction the one true note that will crack the silence.

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Carol Lefevre is an Adelaide-based writer whose book, The Happiness Glass, explores the imaginative terrain between essays and short fiction. The narrative takes us from remote NSW to New Zealand and England through a series of deeply affecting experiences of poverty, domestic violence, loneliness, infertility, adoption and grief. Her writing is sharp, moving, insightful and beautifully poetic. “Burning With Madame Bovary” records the tentative emergence of a writer, while the remaining essays explore the complex griefs of homesickness, inter-country adoption, and family estrangement. The fictional character Lily Brennan appears at points from childhood to old age, allowing the writer to navigate some of the problems of autobiographical writing, while adding layers of meaning to the unfolding life

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Maria Merryweather returns to Moonacre Manor with her granddaughter Rose to escape the horrors of the first world war bombings in London. The magical qualities of Moonacre Valley are rediscovered as Rose meets Wrolf, who is more lion than dog, and sees the little white horse, an entrancing unicorn. Rose soon discovers that the Merryweathers’ old foes, the de Noir clan, are once more spreading darkness and fear through the Valley under the influence of Hugo de Noir. With the help of her new friend, Devin, and a variety of animal companions can Rose uncover the mystery of the Silver Moth aeroplane, rescue a young woman and her baby, and help an unexpected kindred spirit, William de Noir? Beautiful, thrilling, and magical, The Silver Moth, returns to the fantasy world of the bestselling timeless classic The Little White Horse.

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