Cirrus@Austlit

'On her first day of school, Lily Struthers meets Eva, one of the daughters of the infamous avant-garde artist Evan Trentham. He and his wife are attempting to escape the stifling conservatism of 1930s Australia by inviting other like-minded artists to live and work with them at their family home. As Lily’s friendship with Eva grows, she becomes infatuated with this artist colony, longing to truly belong to this makeshift family.

'Looking back on those years later in life, Lily realises that this utopian circle involved the same themes as Evan Trentham’s art: Faustian bargains and terrible recompense; spectacular fortunes and falls from grace. Yet it was not Evan, nor the other artists he gathered around him, but his own daughters, who paid the debt that was owing.

'The Strays is an engrossing story of ambition, sacrifice and compromised loyalties from an exciting new talent.'

Source: Publisher's blurb. (Sighted: 30/1/2014)

'In The Best Australian Essays 2014, Robert Manne assembles his picks of contemporary non-fiction writing. Tim Winton reflects on the impact of landscape on the Australian character; Helen Garner remembers her mother with a raw and stirring poignancy; Christos Tsiolkas wonders how the Left forgot their origins; Tim Flannery traces the history of the Great Barrier Reef and fears its destruction. With essays traversing madness, liberty under the rule of Tony Abbott, the enslaving of horses and the legacy of Doris Lessing, this sharp collection offers lucid insight, shrewd understanding and heartbreaking empathy.' (Publication summary)