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Vendor
Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
Original language
English

SWIMMING HOME

Judy Cotton

Introducing a major new Australian literary voice – an unforgettable memoir of the complicated love between a mother and daughter

In this stunning memoir, full of black humour and razor-sharp observations, visual artist Judy Cotton captures the intricacies of family relationships and the push-pull of home.

Her mother, Eve, was a brilliant but exacting woman, a gifted pianist whose perfectionism cut her career short. After marrying, she established a successful stud farm for sheep in the Blue Mountains while supporting her husband's political career. Judy's charismatic father, Bob, was a federal minister and ambassador to the United States, with traditional ideas about who Judy should become.

Sent to boarding school from the age of four, Judy yearned for her parents but found them increasingly controlling. Her desire for freedom eventually took her overseas, to Korea and Japan in the late 1960s, and later to New York, where she finally discovered belonging in the art scene. But the undertow of home was impossible to escape.

In dazzling prose and with an artist's eye for landscape, Swimming Home is a powerful meditation on loss and longing, freedom and connection.

Judy Cotton is an internationally recognised visual artist based in Connecticut, USA. Her work is held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, the National Gallery of Australia and numerous private collections. From 1974 to 1993, Cotton was the New York contributing editor for Vogue Australia. Swimming Home is her first book.
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Published 2022-04-01 by Black Inc.

Comments

“Easily the most vivid memoir I have ever read. From the smell of frangipani to the “blue lips of the sea” kissing the “crumbs of rock at the bottom of the sandstone cliff”, and blood vessels breaking in eyes, Judy Cotton activates sense memory with astonishing precision. Her descriptions of her early years in Broken Hill and Oberon and of her time in Sydney have a thrilling, almost cinematic concision. Cotton is brilliant on the dynamics of sibling and mother-daughter relations, and she gives the subjects of loss and longing an orchestral subtlety and richness. I read this book in awe – of Cotton's skill, yes, but also of the depth of her feeling for Australia.” —Sebastian Smee, author and Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic for The Washington Post “Swimming Home sees acclaimed painter Judy Cotton in full flight as a writer. The images of country Australia, South Korea and Japan – the landscapes, the flora and fauna, the light, the smells and sounds – all so different from each other, jump off the page as vividly as if she'd painted them. Reading this wholly original memoir about home and family, about not belonging and rebellion, is indeed like viewing a great exhibition. You move from one remarkable image to the next, back and forth through time, from one room to another, inhaling at the beauty before you, exhaling at the shock of some of it, always moving forward to a sense of peace, grace and understanding.” —Caro Llewellyn, author of Diving into Glass “A bloom of love on the page” — Brenda Walker, author of Reading By Moonlight: How Books Saved a Life and The Wing of Night “Judy Cotton paints like she writes and writes like she paints: fiercely, vividly and unpredictably . . . She's fearless when it comes to putting her mark on paper, or on screen. She is, however, also the incongruously well-mannered and dutiful daughter, and they exist in tandem with the wild girl of the high country . . . Judy is a puckish combination of indomitable heart, incisive brain, evil humour and eyes that see at 1/1000th of a second. And she renders that seeing into images with deceptive ease.” —Diana Simmonds, journalist