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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Annelie Geissler
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Biography, Literature & Literary studies

ISLANDS

Peggy Frew

A stunning literary novel from the author of the Stella Prize shortlisted Hope Farm.

One family: Helen and John and their daughters Junie and Anna. Helen falls out of love with John, leaves, finds someone else, then a series of others, not paying enough attention to her daughters along the way. John is consumed by jealousy and hopelessness and in his self-absorption also fails to notice signals from the girls. Junie grows up brittle and defensive, Anna difficult and rebellious. One tragedy: When 15-year-old Anna fails to come home one night, her mother's unconcerned, as she's done it before and always returned, so it takes three days for her to report it. But this time she doesn't come back... Anna has disappeared and the remaining family members spend the rest of their lives trying to make up for her devastating loss. Each of them must find their own way to cope. In the tradition of the novels of Helen Garner, Georgia Blain and Ashley Hay, Islands is a riveting portrait of a family coping with loss. The beauty of ISLANDS is in the unravelling. Peggy's stunning prose keeps the reader guessing after Anna's fate until the very end, a cliff-hanger which leaves a bitter-sweet aftertaste. With remarkable insight into human nature, love and loss, this is a breathtaking work from an author whose talent continues to rise. It will appeal to readers of brilliantly-written family dramas and prize-winning literary fiction. PEGGY FREW's debut novel, House of Sticks, won the 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript.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. Her second novel, Hope Farm, was shortlisted for both the 2016 Miles Franklin Award and the 2016 Stella Prize.

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Book Published 2019-03-01 by Allen & Unwin

Comments

...there is a touch of genius in the way she draws these strands together, turning the mystery of a disappearance into a wholly satisfying read.

Elegiac, storied... aligns itself with other novels in which children - out of rashness, anger or even ignorance - act out to terrible consequences. As with Briony in Ian McEwan's Atonement or Leo in L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between, these decisions are usually compounded by circumstance.

Frew is a gifted writer, evidenced here by finely balanced observations and atmospheric description.

A deep and meditative piece of literature, shining a light on the internal struggles we all face... Utterly engrossing.

Peggy'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.

Frew is particularly attuned to nuance, to psychological shifts. Her anti-sentimentality is rigorous, her perceptions multi-dimensional. She is curious about what lies just out of sight.

With loss at its heart, Islands is rich with stylistic invention and creative form.

Islands is a beautiful study of sorrow that describes the disintegration of a family due to a marriage break-up, childhood neglect and the ongoing trauma of a disappearance.

There's something of both Helen Garner and Denis Johnson in the DNA of Islands, the way the voice is lyrical and clear-eyed in its depiction of human misery in its various stripes. Having previously written devastating, sensitive and enigmatic accounts of familial disintegration... Frew has fashioned another heartbreaker here.

Islands is not another mystery or thriller to toss on the towering pile of missing-daugh-ter novels.

Islands is a beautifully written book concerned at its core with the complexity of family relationships.

ISLANDS by Peggy Frew has been shortlisted for Australia's most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2020! As per the judging panel: This poetic novel maps the disintegration of a nuclear family, set against the backdrop of both Phillip Island and Melbourne suburbia. Frew takes great narrative risks to explore the generational repercussions of loss and trauma through a fractured, multi-perspectival account in which time becomes fluid, truths are radically subjective, and absence is always a wounding presence.

Frew's talent for descriptive prose and psychogeography is evident throughout... Many literary fictions grapple with daily lives but it is Frew's experimentation that makes Islands stand out. She takes risks by puncturing the narrative at key moments...

Peggy Frew shows her trademark flair for bringing complex domestic lives to the fore in her latest novel Islands.

A riveting and brilliant portrait of a family in crisis.

A spellbinding novel in the tradition of Helen Garner, Charlotte Wood and Georgia Blain.