'Nic is a forty-five-year-old trivia buff, amateur nail artist and fairy godmother to the neighbourhood's stray cats. She's also the owner of a decade's worth of daily newspapers, enough clothes and shoes to fill Big W three times over and a pen collection which, if laid end-to-end, would probably circle her house twice.
'The person she's closest to in the world is her beloved niece Lena, who she meets for lunch every Sunday. One day Nic fails to show up. When Lena travels to her aunt's house to see if Nic's all right, she gets the shock of her life, and sets in train a series of events that will prove cataclysmic for them both.
'By the acclaimed author of An Isolated Incident, Love Objects is a clear-eyed, heart-wrenching and deeply compassionate novel about love and family, betrayal and forgiveness, and the things we do to fill our empty spaces.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Emily Maguire is a Sydney-based author who has written six novels, three non-fiction books and numerous articles on feminism, culture and literature. Her early novels Taming the Beast (2004) and The Gospel According to Luke (2006) were both awarded Special Commendations in the Kathleen Mitchell Awards. Smoke in the Room (2009) and Fishing for Tigers (2012) were followed by the two more recent novels that have had the most impact: An Isolated Incident (2016) – which was shortlisted for both the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Award – and Love Objects (2021). Her novels tackle uncomfortable topics such as abusive relationships, intimate partner violence and the ways in which young women are socially conditioned to be ashamed of their own sexuality. In these latter two novels, she deploys alternating perspectives to explore the multifaceted effects of often-traumatic events on her different characters. This in-depth analysis of characters’ motivations and emotional responses mitigates against any simplistic view of ‘good’ and ‘evil’.'(Publication abstract)
At Home with Emily Maguire
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2021
23450566
2021
single work
podcast
interview
'Emily Maguire is the author of six novels, including the Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Award-shortlisted An Isolated Incident. She was a Writer-in-Residence at the Charles Perkins Centre, an experience which enabled her to write 2021's masterful Love Objects.
'Emily works as a teacher and as a mentor to young and emerging writers, and her articles and essays on sex, feminism, culture and literature have been published widely including in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Observer and The Age.' (Production introduction)
'I was already thinking of ‘stuff’ when I read Emily Maguire’s Love Objects – a novel centred around Nic, a 45-year old hoarder; her uni-age niece, Lena; and her nephew, Will. We recently moved the contents of our garage into storage to prepare for renovations, and found ourselves stacking boxes of things we don’t intend to keep into a large, rented locker. There just wasn’t enough time to go through them. Toys from my childhood, my husband’s, our daughter’s; unused greeting cards; received greeting cards; packing envelopes of all sizes; roach-nibbled books; tubs of pens and markers and pencils; drawings of who knows what; clothes and towels and DVDs and documents from when my in-laws died.' (Introduction)
'The two main characters of Maguire’s book have their consent breached in very different ways. She spoke to Guardian Australia’s Lucy Clark as part of Guardian Australia’s monthly book club' (Introduction)
'The sixth novel from the author of An Isolated Incident and Fishing for Tigers explores hoarding, shame and class.'
'I was already thinking of ‘stuff’ when I read Emily Maguire’s Love Objects – a novel centred around Nic, a 45-year old hoarder; her uni-age niece, Lena; and her nephew, Will. We recently moved the contents of our garage into storage to prepare for renovations, and found ourselves stacking boxes of things we don’t intend to keep into a large, rented locker. There just wasn’t enough time to go through them. Toys from my childhood, my husband’s, our daughter’s; unused greeting cards; received greeting cards; packing envelopes of all sizes; roach-nibbled books; tubs of pens and markers and pencils; drawings of who knows what; clothes and towels and DVDs and documents from when my in-laws died.' (Introduction)
'The two main characters of Maguire’s book have their consent breached in very different ways. She spoke to Guardian Australia’s Lucy Clark as part of Guardian Australia’s monthly book club' (Introduction)
At Home with Emily Maguire
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2021
23450566
2021
single work
podcast
interview
'Emily Maguire is the author of six novels, including the Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Award-shortlisted An Isolated Incident. She was a Writer-in-Residence at the Charles Perkins Centre, an experience which enabled her to write 2021's masterful Love Objects.
'Emily works as a teacher and as a mentor to young and emerging writers, and her articles and essays on sex, feminism, culture and literature have been published widely including in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Observer and The Age.' (Production introduction)
'Emily Maguire is a Sydney-based author who has written six novels, three non-fiction books and numerous articles on feminism, culture and literature. Her early novels Taming the Beast (2004) and The Gospel According to Luke (2006) were both awarded Special Commendations in the Kathleen Mitchell Awards. Smoke in the Room (2009) and Fishing for Tigers (2012) were followed by the two more recent novels that have had the most impact: An Isolated Incident (2016) – which was shortlisted for both the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Award – and Love Objects (2021). Her novels tackle uncomfortable topics such as abusive relationships, intimate partner violence and the ways in which young women are socially conditioned to be ashamed of their own sexuality. In these latter two novels, she deploys alternating perspectives to explore the multifaceted effects of often-traumatic events on her different characters. This in-depth analysis of characters’ motivations and emotional responses mitigates against any simplistic view of ‘good’ and ‘evil’.'(Publication abstract)
