My Life as a Fake
Milsons Point
:
Random House Australia
,
2003
Z1045776
2003
single work
novel
(taught in 8 units)
Sarah Wode-Douglas is an aristocratic woman who has made her living as the editor of the poetry magazine "First Proof", until she impulsively follows a friend to Kuala Lumpur. She meets Christopher Chubb, an enigmatic wreck of a man whose terrible secrets Sarah is compelled to discover and pursue. (Source: Trove)
Box the Pony
1997
Sydney
:
Hodder Headline
,
1999
Z114430
1997
single work
drama
(taught in 4 units)
One-woman play, written by and for Leah Purcell, which draws on her experiences growing up, her relationship with her mother, and the contrast between her country upbringing and city life.
Radiance
Paddington
:
Currency Press
Belvoir Street Theatre
,
1993
Z25564
1993
single work
drama
(taught in 3 units)
'Louis Nowra’s Radiance is an exuberant black sabbath for three great Indigenous dames. It begins conventionally enough: Mae, Nona and Cressy gather at the old Queenslander in the tropics for Mum’s funeral. But these three sisters are forces of nature, and they haven’t been in the same room for years, and years. It isn’t long before that old house can’t contain the joy and pain of them all being together again…
'Radiance began its life at Belvoir in 1993. After 22 years, Nowra’s feat of playwriting – almost Shakespearean, a Tempest-like packet of lust, rage, grief and high-flying foolery – is ready to be unleashed again. Leah Purcell is the woman for the job.
'Purcell is a powerhouse. She burst onto the national stage nearly two decades ago and is as full of fight and life as she ever was. What better idea than for this all-round theatre elder to direct herself in this mighty little classic?' (2015 Production summary)
Carpentaria
Artarmon
:
Giramondo Publishing
,
2006
Z1184902
2006
single work
novel
(taught in 47 units)
Carpentaria's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, whose members are the leaders of the Pricklebush people, and their battles with old Joseph Midnight's tearaway Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel is populated by extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, leader of the holy Aboriginal pilgrimage, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the ever-vigilant Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, Angel Day the queen of the rubbish-dump, and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stand like giants in this storm-swept world. (Backcover)
Coonardoo : The Well in the Shadow
1928
Z1081769
1928
single work
novel
(taught in 39 units)
Set in North-West of Western Australia, it describes life on cattle stations and the relationship between the white owner of the station and Coonardoo, an Aboriginal woman.
Miss Peabody's Inheritance
St Lucia
:
University of Queensland Press
,
1983
Z796757
1983
single work
novel
(taught in 4 units)
'In this potent tale of love and loneliness, Elizabeth Jolley has woven two parallel stories into a dazzlingly original novel. Arabella Thorne is a brilliant, witty and accomplished woman. The exotic tale of this flamboyant eccentric and her European travels – with jealous secretary and shy schoolgirl protégée – is the inheritance that transforms the uneventful suburban life of Miss Peabody.' (Publication summary)
Loaded
Milsons Point
:
Vintage Australia
,
1995
Z565443
1995
single work
novel
(taught in 40 units)
'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.
'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.
'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.
'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)
