Cirrus@Austlit

Grown dowdy while caring for her ailing father, a woman decides to update her appearance before an approaching reunion. A chance meeting resolves a misunderstanding and changes the lives of a number of people.

An unmarried woman, living in seclusion with her elderly parents, is entranced by the son of one of her father's friends when he turns up unexpectedly. He tells tales of the exotic places in which he has worked and they fall in love, but he has other priorities.

Mann discusses the judging of the first Bulletin Novel Competition which was won jointly by Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo and Marjorie Barnard's and Flora Eldershaw's A House Is Built. Mann states that women won nearly all the prize money, queries 'Is the novel Woman's natural and peculiar vehicle of literary expression?', and offers his theories on why this may be so. He refers briefly to Prichard's novel as the prize winner, but makes no reference to A House Is Built.

Barnard and Eldershaw speak of their long-standing friendship and explain the process of collaboration which produced their novel, A House Is Built. The novel was joint winner, together with Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo, of the first Bulletin Novel Competition in 1928. Neither had published before, but they had wanted to write a novel together since their days at Sydney University.