'This is likely to be the last work by Beverley Farmer, one of Australia’s great prose stylists, and a pioneer of women’s writing, in her exploration of feminine concerns, and her use of different literary forms – novel, short story, poetry, essay, journal, myth and fairy tale.
'This Water is a collection of five tales, three of them novella length, each a fragmentary love story with a nameless woman at the centre, and a mythic dimension (Greek or Celtic, folklore or fable) rooted in the power of nature. Water and stone, ice and fire, light and darkness play an important role in all the stories, as do other motifs, closely related to women’s experience, blood, birth, possession and release, marriage and singularity. One tale, set on the south coast of Victoria, is animated by the legend of the Great Silkie, following Sylvia Plath and Joan Baez; another finds its rebellious princess in Lake Annaghmakerrig in Ireland; a third has Clytemnestra as its central figure, mourning the daughter sacrificed by her husband Agamemnon so that he can go to war with Troy. The stories contain and reflect and shadow one other: in each the women speak, act, think for themselves, in opposing or escaping from situations ordained by authority.' (Publication summary)
For my granddaughter
Mia Sophia Talihmanidou
and for my travelling companion
Penny Hunter
'It is not unusual to encounter feminist re-readings of traditional stories, in the manner of speaking back via parodic challenges to gender stereotypes, but it is rare to find a writer re-dressing the skeletal bones of narrative to offer nuanced and sensual texts which subvert but also re-animate tales. And that is what is achieved in Beverley Farmer’s This Water:Five Tales (2017). After the contemplative essays of The Bone House (2005), with their stark black and white imagery and emphasis on dormancy and stone, Farmer returns to fiction where inherited stories are re-shaped to challenge the confines of precedent. This new publication includes a first-person story that illustrates the formative effects of word and image, reinterpretations of two Celtic tales, one Greek legend and a macabre European fairy-tale. Each story is discrete but they all reconsider masculist perceptions of women through the ages. This paper considers the re-framing and interrogation of the gendered designs of oral and folkloric traditions in This Water: Five Tales, focussing on ‘water’as a unifying theme and the fluency of Farmer’s poetic prose.' (Publication abstract)
'When she began publishing fiction in the 1980s, Beverley Farmer was part of a rising generation of women writers adding their voices to the record of Australian life. She was seen as a woman of modern multicultural Australia who had married one of the new Greek immigrants and experienced the contrast of cultures between Old Europe and modern Australia.' (Introduction)
'In some circles, Beverley Farmer is a grand dame of Australian letters. Those who love her cherish her molten narratives, her liquid prose. In her long career she has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, won a NSW Premier’s Award, wrote a collection of essays, three collections of short fiction and three novels, but she remains largely unknown by the mainstream reading public.' (Introduction)
'In some circles, Beverley Farmer is a grand dame of Australian letters. Those who love her cherish her molten narratives, her liquid prose. In her long career she has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, won a NSW Premier’s Award, wrote a collection of essays, three collections of short fiction and three novels, but she remains largely unknown by the mainstream reading public.' (Introduction)
'When she began publishing fiction in the 1980s, Beverley Farmer was part of a rising generation of women writers adding their voices to the record of Australian life. She was seen as a woman of modern multicultural Australia who had married one of the new Greek immigrants and experienced the contrast of cultures between Old Europe and modern Australia.' (Introduction)
'It is not unusual to encounter feminist re-readings of traditional stories, in the manner of speaking back via parodic challenges to gender stereotypes, but it is rare to find a writer re-dressing the skeletal bones of narrative to offer nuanced and sensual texts which subvert but also re-animate tales. And that is what is achieved in Beverley Farmer’s This Water:Five Tales (2017). After the contemplative essays of The Bone House (2005), with their stark black and white imagery and emphasis on dormancy and stone, Farmer returns to fiction where inherited stories are re-shaped to challenge the confines of precedent. This new publication includes a first-person story that illustrates the formative effects of word and image, reinterpretations of two Celtic tales, one Greek legend and a macabre European fairy-tale. Each story is discrete but they all reconsider masculist perceptions of women through the ages. This paper considers the re-framing and interrogation of the gendered designs of oral and folkloric traditions in This Water: Five Tales, focussing on ‘water’as a unifying theme and the fluency of Farmer’s poetic prose.' (Publication abstract)
