| Vendor | |
|---|---|
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Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus |
| Original language | |
| English | |
| Categories | |
THE UNEXPECTED EDUCATION OF EMILY DEAN
It's 1943 and the world is at war when fifteen-year-old Ailsa is packed off to stay with country relatives after her mother has had a breakdown.
'Grandmother' and her companion the eternally disappointed Eunice run the once grand country house with a whip hand, though the natural social order is upended in the kitchen, where Della, the cook, rules with religious fervour. Great-uncle Cecil's planning to shoot the women if the Japanese invade, while Claudio, the Italian prisoner of war and farm worker, wanders the boundaries of the property desperate for the war to end and a return to civilisation. Each evening Aunt Lydia patrols the orchard in a yellow silk dress, shooting snakes amongst the agapanthus ... Abandoned and lonely, Ailsa's determined to find her way back home. How can she stay, when they're all so strange and ghastly? Yet despite herself, she gets drawn into a new life. She discovers a cache of erotic fiction in the homestead library and in the process of giving Claudio English lessons, new and passionate feelings arise. Even her fantasies of friendship with the aloof but alluring Lydia seem to be coming true when a dark secret is shared.
Ailsa becomes entangled in a complex web of relationships that confront her with life-changing choices. By visit's end, no one is the same, and the visitor herself has been radically transformed.
This is a wryly funny and affecting novel about desire, deceit and self-discovery.
Mira Robertson is a screenwriter and author. She has co-written a number of films, including Ana Kokkinos's award-winning feature Head On. Her short stories have been published in the literary journals Meanjin and Griffith Review.
'Grandmother' and her companion the eternally disappointed Eunice run the once grand country house with a whip hand, though the natural social order is upended in the kitchen, where Della, the cook, rules with religious fervour. Great-uncle Cecil's planning to shoot the women if the Japanese invade, while Claudio, the Italian prisoner of war and farm worker, wanders the boundaries of the property desperate for the war to end and a return to civilisation. Each evening Aunt Lydia patrols the orchard in a yellow silk dress, shooting snakes amongst the agapanthus ... Abandoned and lonely, Ailsa's determined to find her way back home. How can she stay, when they're all so strange and ghastly? Yet despite herself, she gets drawn into a new life. She discovers a cache of erotic fiction in the homestead library and in the process of giving Claudio English lessons, new and passionate feelings arise. Even her fantasies of friendship with the aloof but alluring Lydia seem to be coming true when a dark secret is shared.
Ailsa becomes entangled in a complex web of relationships that confront her with life-changing choices. By visit's end, no one is the same, and the visitor herself has been radically transformed.
This is a wryly funny and affecting novel about desire, deceit and self-discovery.
Mira Robertson is a screenwriter and author. She has co-written a number of films, including Ana Kokkinos's award-winning feature Head On. Her short stories have been published in the literary journals Meanjin and Griffith Review.
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Book
Published 2018-04-01 by Black Inc. |