Charlotte Wood
Charlotte Wood grew up in a large family in country New South Wales. She is the author of three critically acclaimed novels. The first, Pieces of a Girl, won the Jim Hamilton Award for an unpublished manuscript and in 2000 was shortlisted for several other prizes. Her second book, The Submerged Cathedral, was shortlisted for the 2005 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, South East Asia/South Pacific region the same year. The Children, Charlotte’s third novel, was published in 2007 to resounding praise. Her latest book is Animal People, published in October 2011 by Allen & Unwin. She has worked as a journalist and editor for many years, and lives in Sydney with her husband.
Website: http://www.charlottewood.com.au/
Books by Charlotte Wood
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The Submerged Cathedral
Spanning many years, travelling across Australia's vast continent and through some of Europe's great cities, The Submerged Cathedral is a beguiling, heartbreaking story of paradise and the fall, of sacrifice and atonement, and of sisterly love and rivalry. Most of all, however, it is about an enduring and sacred love - a love stronger than death - and the journeys undertaken in its name. Written in spare, haunting prose, this novel is a work of the highest literary merit, as well as a timeless love story that will enthrall readers.
The release of Charlotte Wood's acclaimed first novel, Pieces of a Girl, marked her as a young writer of great promise; The Submerged Cathedral thrillingly confirms that promise with astonishing assurance and lyricism.
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Pieces of a Girl
Throughout her childhood Ivy is punished for the theft of her mother’s life.
Then Victor arrives suddenly one suburban Sydney summer, and stays, bringing with him the possibility of a father – but also the terrible danger that he might discover June and Ivy’s secret.
Twenty years later, when Ivy is uneasily married to Linford, she searches out Victor. In his house by the beach, past and present collide.
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The Children
Three adult siblings return home to the country town of their childhood when their father is critically injured in a fall. They each have their own reasons for dreading the homecoming, and bring with them the remnants and resentments of years before. Mandy has escaped a worthy marriage and a troubled past to live a traumatic and tenuous life reporting the hell of the world's war zones. Cathy can't get interested in anything much, and Stephen has been estranged from his father since an incident from his adolescence. Their father's impending death brings them together, but how will they forgive each other the transgressions of the past?
In the hospital where their father lies in a coma, a young wardsman, Tony, has been waiting for Mandy to come home. Since they met by accident years before, he has obsessively watched her reports from Bosnia, Beirut and Fallujah, devouring her image on television and making plans for their life together. He knows her worst secret, but she doesn't even remember who he is. And when she does, it's too late to stop what's been set in motion
Beautifully written, funny, moving and filled with shocks of recognition and revelation, The Children builds relentlessly to a climax of chilling and devastating force. This novel marks Charlotte Wood as one of our finest writers.
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Brothers and Sisters
A girl sneaks into her brothers’ rooms to rummage through their pockets while they’re out. A man boards a plane to attend his brother’s funeral. Another man’s brother comes home from jail, a young woman watches her sister embrace life and London while she is left behind, and two girls compete for the colour pink and their father’s love.
Trespass and abandonment, old secrets and new truths, rivalry and protection, love and fear: twelve of Australia’s best writers tell surprising stories of the abiding bonds—bad, beautiful or broken— between brothers and sisters.
Critics and readers alike have long commented on Charlotte Wood's acute ability to dissect sibling relationships in her novels. Lifelong resentments, tensions, alliances and affections between brothers and sisters play out in her books to brilliant effect. Here, Wood brings her skills to an anthology of newly-commissioned stories by well-known and new writers - Nam Le, Christos Tsiolkas, Tony Birch, Tegan Bennett Daylight, Robert Drewe, Ashley Hay, Cate Kennedy, Roger McDonald, Paddy O'Reilly, Virginia Peters, Michael Sala and Wood herself - who have written about the sister/brother relationships, both in fictional and non-fictional forms.
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Animal People
Set in a big Australian city over a single day, ANIMAL PEOPLE traces a watershed day in the life of Stephen, aimless, unhappy, unfulfilled—and without a clue as to how to make his life better.
His dead-end job at the zoo, his demanding family, his oppressive feelings for Fiona and the pitiless city itself…the great weight of it all threatens to some crashing down on him. The day will bring untold surprises and disasters, but will also show him—perhaps too late—that love is not a trap, and only he can free himself.
Sharply observed, hilarious, tender and heartbreaking, ANIMAL PEOPLE is a portrait of urban life, a meditation on the conflicted nature of human-animal relationships, and a masterpiece of storytelling.
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