Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English
Categories
Fiction & Related items

HOPE FARM

Peggy Frew

It is the winter of 1985. Hope Farm sticks out of the ragged landscape like a decaying tooth, its weatherboard walls sagging into the undergrowth. Silver's mother, Ishtar, has fallen for the charismatic Miller, and the three of them have moved to the rural hippie commune to make a new start.

At Hope, Silver finds unexpected friendship and, at last, a place to call home. But it is also here that, at just thirteen, she is thrust into an unrelenting adult world and the walls begin to come tumbling down, with deadly consequences.

HOPE FARM is the masterful second novel from award-winning author Peggy Frew, and is a devastatingly beautiful story about the broken bonds of childhood, and the enduring cost of holding back the truth.

Peggy Frew's debut novel, House of Sticks, won the 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. Her story Home Visit' won The Age short story competition. She has been published in New Australian Stories 2, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue, and Meanjin. Peggy is also a member of the critically acclaimed and award-winning Melbourne band Art of Fighting.

Available products
Book Published 2015-10-01 by Scribe Publications

Comments

Frew is a gifted writer, evidenced here by finely balanced observations and atmospheric description Silver is poised at the beginning of adult understanding and Frew handles the challenge with deftness. Silver's insight and compassion are juxtaposed with naivety and the idealistic force of her first crushes.

Winner of the Barbara Jefferis award which is offered for 'the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society'. Read more...

Peggy Frew is an amazing writer and Hope Farm is a great novel. The complex story of Silver and Ishtar and their fraught relationship is beautifully written, acutely observed and, best of all, completely absorbing. I could almost feel the crisp Gippsland mornings, hear the birds warbling, and smell the stale dope smoke. Hope Farm is elegant, tender, and very wise. Chris Womersley, award-winning author of Bereft and Cairo

Longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award Read more...

One of the final strengths of Frew's writing is her instinct not to veer into cliche. As with growing up, there are many bright instances in Hope Farm, but where one might hope, despite it all, for relief, Frew is beautifully and necessarily steadfast. Read more...

Shortlisted for the Stella Prize Read more...

An original tale, drawing into the body of Australian literary fiction, a world between the cracks. Frew's voice is contemporary, her observations sharp and sensitive. Hope Farm describes the cycle of loss and damage when there are no boundaries to protect us. Sofie Laguna, author of The Eye of the Sheep, winner of the 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award

Hope Farm is a finely calibrated study of love, loss and belonging. Read more...

Frew's deceptively slow-burn tale of a teenage girl adrift, bewildered, seeking solidity moves inexorably to its climax, laying bare a certain darkness at the heart of the alternative lifestyle. But it's the tale of a survivor, too. Luke Davies, award-winning author of Candy