Jane Alison Jane Alison i(A80768 works by)
Born: Established: 1961 Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, ;
Gender: Female
Expatriate assertion
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Works By

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2 6 y separately published work icon The Sisters Antipodes Jane Alison , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2009 Z1575700 2009 single work autobiography When Jane Alison was a child, her family met another that seemed like its mirror: a father in the Foreign Service, a beautiful mother, and two little girls, the younger two - one of them Jane - sharing a birthday. With so much in common, the two families became almost instantly inseparable. Within months, affairs had ignited between the adults, and before long the pairs had exchanged partners - divorced, remarried, and moved on. As if in a cataclysm of nature, two families were ripped asunder, and two new ones were formed. Two pairs of girls were left in shock, a 'silent, numb shock, like a crack inside stone, not enough to split it but inside, quietly fissuring'. And Jane and her stepsister were thrown into a state of wordless combat for the love of their fathers. (Source: Trove)
1 y separately published work icon Natives and Exotics Jane Alison , Orlando : Harcourt , 2005 Z1575706 2005 single work novel

'It's a difficult thing to crave, land, especially when your body is small. And a dangerous thing, too, when you have no business being there, when it's not even where you're from.

'Alice, an unrooted child of diplomats in South America; Violet, a newlywed settling in the Australian scrub; George, a gardener fleeing the violent Clearances.

'Three generations wander a world scarred by colonialism and disturbing scientific revelations, from the unearthing of the first dinosaur bones to the discovery that the continents drift, in a hypnotic novel about our passionate, uneasy affair with nature, in which we restlessly search for home.' (Author's abstract)

1 Fiction Jane Alison , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 18 May vol. 122 no. 6421 2004; (p. 64)

— Review of The Marriage of the Sea Jane Alison , 2003 single work novel
1 8 y separately published work icon The Marriage of the Sea Jane Alison , New York (City) : Farrar Straus and Giroux , 2003 Z1099936 2003 single work novel
6 y separately published work icon The Love-Artist Jane Alison , New York (City) : Farrar Straus and Giroux , 2001 Z1105574 2001 single work novel fantasy

'Why was Ovid, the most popular poet of his day, banished from Rome? Why do only two lines survive of his play Medea, reputedly his most passionate, most accomplished work? Between the known details of Ovid's life and these enigmas, Jane Alison has created a haunting drama of psychological manipulation, and an ingenious meditation on love, art and immortality. When Ovid encounters a woman who embodies the fictitious creations of his soon-to-be published Metamorphoses, he is enchanted, obsessed, and inspired. Part healer, part witch, she seems to be myth come to life, and Ovid lures her away from her home by the Black Sea to Rome. But the inexorable pull of ambition leads him to make a Faustian bargain with fate that will betray his newfound muse.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

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