Кристина Олссон0.0 The China Garden follows three protagonists over a 2-week period that culminates in a shocking event that affects them all. Fifty-year-old Laura has come home from Italy to bury her mother Angela and get her affairs in order. However, she has an unexpected surprise waiting for her until Angela's death, Laura had believed she was an only child, but the will has made allowance for a brother she had never known, adopted out at birth. In another part of town, 70-year-old Cress is grieving the loss, not only of Angela, but of her own faith. She consoles herself with irregular thefts from the op shop where she volunteers: an old wedding dress, a silver fork, small pictures of the Virgin Mary. Somewhere among these things, she knows, she will relocate faith, she will fend off fear. Kieran, the watcher, sees them both. Kieran is a gatherer of information, a 30-year-old quiz show addict who failed junior school but is good at other kinds of knowing; who knits his world together with cunningly garnered facts and lovingly stored information. As the tragic event looms, it pierces and links the lives of the three characters. The China Garden explores identity in mid-century and mid-life; examining the effects of social policies in a country struggling to re-establish a fascade of goodness and morality after a major world war. It shows how the events of mid-life, the death of parents, the confrontation with lost faith or the fruits of youthful mistakes might unravel the various versions of ourselves that we construct in order to survive.
Сьюзан Варга0.0 Julia has suddenly lost her husband and, along with him, her will to live. The vital, energetic old woman that her daughter Kati thought she knew has disappeared almost overnight. How is Kati to cope with a mother constantly on the verge of suicide? This finely wrought tale of love and conflict casts a searchlight into dark areas - how people deal with ageing, loss, death, and grief. At what point are you allowed to say "Life is not worth living?" The story is exquisite and captures the complications of parents and their adult children, and matters around the quality of life.
Энза Гандольфо0.0 Kate Wilks is a swimmer, a teacher and a writer, but she has never been a mother. She believes she has a good and satisfying life until a chance encounter with her ex-husband and his daughter. Suddenly submerged by a past overflowing with grief, secrets and betrayals, Kate is forced to reassess her life.
Кейт Кеннеди0.0 Once, Rich and sandy were environmental activists, part of a world-famous blockade in Tasmania to save the wilderness. Now, twenty-five years later, they have both settled into the uncomfortable compromises of middle age - although they've gone about it in very different ways. About the only thing they have in common is their fifteen-year-old daughter, Sophie.
When the perennially restless Rich decides to take Sophie, whom he hardly knows, on a trek into the Tasmanian wilderness, his overconfidence and her growing disillusion with him set off a chain of events that no one could have predicted. Instead of respect, Rich finds antagonism in his relationship with Sophie; and in the vast landscape he once felt an affinity for, he encounters nothing but disorientation and fear.
Ultimately all three characters will learn that if they are to survive, each must traverse not only the secret territories that lie between them but also those within themselves.
Стивен Кэрролл0.0 The new novel from 2008 Miles Franklin Award-winner, Steven Carroll they may never have a life together, but they will have their moment. they will have this much. England, September 1934 two young lovers, Catherine and Daniel, have trespassed into the rose garden of Burnt Norton, an abandoned house in the English countryside. Hearing the sound of footsteps, they hide, and then witness the poet t.S. ('Tom') Eliot and his close friend Emily enter the garden and bury a mysterious tin in the earth. tom and Emily knew each other in America in their youth; now in their forties, they have come together again. But Tom is married, and his wife has no intention of letting him go. What is it that binds tom and Emily together? What happens when the muse steps out of the shadows? In the enclosed world of an English village one autumn, their story becomes entwined with that of Catherine and Daniel, who are certain in their newfound love and full of possibility. From one of Australia's finest writers, this is a moving, lyrical novel about poetry and inspiration, the incandescence of first love and the yearning for a life that may never be lived. 'a writer worth cherishing. His prose is unfailingly assured, lyrical, poised.' the Australian
