'Male writers and critics seem more prone than their female counterparts to making claims about each other’s genius. After revisiting Jennifer Maiden’s work for this review, I feel it’s time to buck that trend. Maiden’s work is idiosyncratic, urgent and brutally intelligent. She is also committed to her imbrication in the politics of the world, dedicated to her art, and bent on making her own way forward. In fact, when her former publisher stopped producing her work, her daughter set up an independent feminist press to do the job.' (Introduction)
'The sixth and final novel of Steven Carroll’s Glenroy series takes us back to where this intergenerational saga begins, to Melbourne in 1917, and to Maryanne, a 40-year-old woman who is pregnant with an illegitimate child; a child who is “the egg from which a story would be hatched”.' (Introduction)