'Outside, the rain continues unceasing; silver sheets sluicing down, the trees and shrubs soaking and bedraggled, the earth sodden, puddles overflowing, torrents coursing onwards, as the darkness slowly softens with the dawn.
'Ester is a family therapist with an appointment book that catalogues the woes of the middle class. She spends her days helping others find happiness, but her own family relationships are tense and frayed. Estranged from both her sister, April, and her ex-husband, Lawrence, Ester wants to be able to let herself fall in love again. Meanwhile, April and Lawrence are battling through their own messy lives, and Ester and April’s mother, Hilary, is facing the most significant decision she’ll ever have to make.
'Taking place over one rainy day in Sydney, and rendered with the evocative and powerful prose Blain is known for, Between a Wolf and a Dog is a novel about dissatisfactions and anxieties in the face of relative privilege. Yet it is also a celebration of the best in all of us — our capacity to live in the face of ordinary sorrows, and to draw strength from the transformative power of art. Ultimately, it is a joyous recognition of the profound beauty of being alive.' (Publication summary)
Originally marketed by Scribe as The Maybe Box, pre-publication.
'Georgia Blain’s final novel, Between a Wolf and a Dog, was published in 2016 and is currently shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize. Sadly, Georgia passed away from a brain tumour in December 2016. To honour her shortlisting and celebrate the novel, Georgia’s friend and fellow writer Tegan Bennett Daylight shares this reflection.' (Introduction)
Between a Wolf and a Dog by Georgia Blain
Melbourne
:
CAE Book Group
,
2017
12214811
2017
single work
criticism
'Early in November 2015, Sydney novelist Georgia Blain had a seizure and was taken to hospital for tests. The results were as bad as they could be: glioblastoma, an aggressive and incurable brain tumour. Six days later she had surgery to remove the tumour – ‘the unwelcome guest’, her surgeon called it – but was warned that it would grow back. The prognosis with glioblastoma is always poor: without treatment, the average survival period from the time of diagnosis is three months. With treatment, a year or a little more. Blain died on 9 December 2016, thirteen months after diagnosis and a few days short of her 52nd birthday. (Introduction)
'
'There are certain books that have the knack of getting under your skin. This is why George Bernard Shaw declared Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit to be a far more “seditious” text than Karl Marx’s Das Capital.
'What he was getting at is the power of books to work on your emotions. The intellect can be too cold an instrument to engender empathy, to bring people who are distant from you into your “circle of concern”. And it is precisely this, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues, that matters for the pursuit of social justice.
'In 2017, the Stella Prize judges have again come up with a shortlist of books that will engage your brain, but also your heart. They illuminate all the aspects of life that make us frail and vulnerable – sickness, dying, inequality – realities that many of us would prefer to ignore.' (Introduction)
'Early in November 2015, Sydney novelist Georgia Blain had a seizure and was taken to hospital for tests. The results were as bad as they could be: glioblastoma, an aggressive and incurable brain tumour. Six days later she had surgery to remove the tumour – ‘the unwelcome guest’, her surgeon called it – but was warned that it would grow back. The prognosis with glioblastoma is always poor: without treatment, the average survival period from the time of diagnosis is three months. With treatment, a year or a little more. Blain died on 9 December 2016, thirteen months after diagnosis and a few days short of her 52nd birthday. (Introduction)
'
Between a Wolf and a Dog by Georgia Blain
Melbourne
:
CAE Book Group
,
2017
12214811
2017
single work
criticism
'Georgia Blain’s final novel, Between a Wolf and a Dog, was published in 2016 and is currently shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize. Sadly, Georgia passed away from a brain tumour in December 2016. To honour her shortlisting and celebrate the novel, Georgia’s friend and fellow writer Tegan Bennett Daylight shares this reflection.' (Introduction)
