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Cover image courtesy of publisher.
y separately published work icon A Hundred Small Lessons : A Novel single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 A Hundred Small Lessons : A Novel
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Luminous and deeply affecting, A Hundred Small Lessons is about the many small decisions - the invisible moments - that come to make a life. The intertwined lives of two women from different generations tell a rich and intimate story of how we feel what it is to be human, and how place can transform who we are. It takes account of what it means to be mother or daughter; father or son. It's a story of love, and of life...When Elsie Gormley falls and is forced to leave her Brisbane home of sixty-two years, Lucy Kiss and her family move in, with their new life - new house, new city, new baby. Lucy and her husband Ben are struggling to transform from adventurous lovers to new parents and seek to smooth the rough edges of their present with memories of their past as they try to discover their future selves...In her nearby nursing home, Elsie revisits the span of her life - the moments she can't bear to let go; the haunts to which she might yet return. Her memories of marriage, motherhood, love and death are intertwined with her old house, whose rooms seem to breathe Elsie's secrets into Lucy...Through one hot, wet Brisbane summer, seven lives - and two different slices of time - wind along with the flow of the river, as two families chart the ways in which we come, sudden and oblivious, into each other's stories, and the unexpected ripples that flow out from those chance encounters...' (Publication summary)

Notes

  • Dedication: For Nigel Beebe, and for Hux

  • Epigraph:

    ... the people we were 

    who said 

    or omitted to say

     the appropriate words ...

    The shapes we mistake 

    For ourselves

    at the edge of the water.

    John Burnside 'III De Libero arbitrio' 

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Crows Nest, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 2017 .
      image of person or book cover 2717132998533280833.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 370p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 29th March 2017
      ISBN: 9781760293208
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Atria Books ,
      2017 .
      image of person or book cover 8872966146589071273.jpg
      This image has been sourced from publisher's website
      Extent: 304p.
      Note/s:
      • Published : 28 November 2017

      ISBN: 9781501165139
    • Crows Nest, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 2018 .
      image of person or book cover 3654373531567541623.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 384p.
      Note/s:
      • Published: 23rd May 2018
         

      ISBN: 9781760633424
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Two Roads ,
      2018 .
      image of person or book cover 7122422949295589805.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 400p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 8 Mach 2018.
      ISBN: 9781473676541, 1473676541
Alternative title: La Casa Delle Giovani Spose
Language: Italian
    • Milan,
      c
      Italy,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Sperling & Kupfer ,
      2020 .
      image of person or book cover 8729016448448414892.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 336p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 21 July 2020
      ISBN: 9788820068981

Other Formats

  • Also large print.
  • Also dyslexic edition

Works about this Work

Love Letter to the Suburbs Katherine Gillespie , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 15 April 2017; (p. 19)
'In this era of soaring house prices and desperate first-home buyers, it’s very brave or very silly to centre a contemporary Australian novel on the concept of property ownership. Puzzlingly, the newly married couple of Ashley Hay’s A Hundred Small Lessons purchase a large piece of riverside real estate without so much as mentioning the huge mortgage they have presumably signed up for. The sense of wonder increases when you learn that one of them does not work, and the other — scarcely less precariously — is a newspaper journalist.' (Introduction)
'A Hundred Small Lessons' by Ashley Hay Tessa Lunney , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 391 2017;
'A Hundred Small Lessons holds powerful truths, simply told. It is a story of parenthood and place, where small domestic moments, rather than dramatic public displays, are the links between people, the present and the past. Each moment occurs in and around a familiar, ordinary Brisbane house, and the book begins when Elsie, the nonagenarian resident, leaves this house for a nursing home, and Lucy and Ben move in with their son Tom.' (Introduction)
Ashley Hay : A Hundred Small Lessons Jeannette Delamoir , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: The Newtown Review of Books , May 2017;
'Ashley Hay’s new novel gives us warm, affectionate portraits of people and place in a story that shifts between past and present.'
Ashley Hay : A Hundred Small Lessons Jeannette Delamoir , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: The Newtown Review of Books , May 2017;
'Ashley Hay’s new novel gives us warm, affectionate portraits of people and place in a story that shifts between past and present.'
'A Hundred Small Lessons' by Ashley Hay Tessa Lunney , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 391 2017;
'A Hundred Small Lessons holds powerful truths, simply told. It is a story of parenthood and place, where small domestic moments, rather than dramatic public displays, are the links between people, the present and the past. Each moment occurs in and around a familiar, ordinary Brisbane house, and the book begins when Elsie, the nonagenarian resident, leaves this house for a nursing home, and Lucy and Ben move in with their son Tom.' (Introduction)
Love Letter to the Suburbs Katherine Gillespie , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 15 April 2017; (p. 19)
'In this era of soaring house prices and desperate first-home buyers, it’s very brave or very silly to centre a contemporary Australian novel on the concept of property ownership. Puzzlingly, the newly married couple of Ashley Hay’s A Hundred Small Lessons purchase a large piece of riverside real estate without so much as mentioning the huge mortgage they have presumably signed up for. The sense of wonder increases when you learn that one of them does not work, and the other — scarcely less precariously — is a newspaper journalist.' (Introduction)
Last amended 18 Mar 2022 08:45:08
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