Georgia Blain

From the author of the multi–award winning bestseller Between a Wolf and a Dog, a powerful collection of previously unpublished stories. A sister is haunted by the consequences of a simple mistake. A daughter searches for certainty as her mother’s memory degrades. An encounter at a house party changes the course of a life. In Far From Home, beloved Australian author Georgia Blain returns to her resonant themes of relationships and family, illness and health, love and death. Composed in Blain’s final years, these nine stories grapple with large questions on a human scale, brimming with her trademark acuity, nuance, and warmth.

A meditation on writing, reading, first words, and last words. On a bright spring day in 2015, as Georgia Blain was mowing the lawn, she collapsed on a bed of blossoms, blood frothing at her mouth. Waking up to find herself in the back of an ambulance being rushed to hospital, she tries to answer questions, but is unable to speak. After the shock of a bleak prognosis--a tumor sitting right in the language center of her brain and a long, gruelling treatment schedule--she immediately turns to writing to rebuild her language and herself. At the same time, her mother moves into a nursing home with Alzheimer's; weeks earlier, her best friend and mentor had been diagnosed with the same brain tumor. All three of them are writers, with language at the core of their being. The Museum of Words is a meditation on writing, reading, first words and last words, picking up thread after thread as it builds on each story to become a much larger narrative. This idiosyncratic and deeply personal memoir is a writer's take on how language shapes us, and how often we take it for granted--until we are in danger of losing it.

WINNER OF THE 2017 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION WINNER OF THE 2016 UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND FICTION BOOK AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 STELLA PRIZE ONE OF BOOKPEOPLE'S '100 BEST AUSTRALIAN BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY' A stunning, award-winning novel about the complexities of family relationships, and ultimately, what it means to be alive. 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 anxieties of the middle class: loneliness, relationships, death. 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 fall in love again. Meanwhile, April is struggling through her own directionless life; Lawrence's reckless past decisions are catching up with him; and Ester and April's mother, Hilary, is about to make a choice that will profoundly affect them all. Taking place largely 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 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 tribute to the beauty of being alive. PRAISE FOR GEORGIA BLAIN " An] elegant, intelligent and affecting novel from a writer at the height of her powers." --The Saturday Paper "Like all her novels, Between a Wolf and a Dog explores the often unarticulated complexities of the intersection of the personal and the political with exquisite grace and intelligence." --Australian Book Review

The story is told through the eyes of Ursula, an out of work actress, who is drifting through life. She is haunted by her past and, in particular, the fateful summer spent with her eccentric family as a teenager at a wild and remote farmhouse, Candelo, on the south coast of Australia where she first falls in love. The holiday ends in disaster: a terrible accident takes place that changes all their lives. Ursula must confront the past and come to terms with truths about herself, and her family, before she can move on and truly exist in the the present.