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Lilian's Story

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

The heartwarming story of Lilian Singer, who starts life at the beginning of the twentieth century as the daughter of a prosperous middle-class Australian family and ends it as a cheerfully eccentric bag-lady living on the streets, quoting Shakespeare for a living. From Booker-shortlisted author Kate Grenville.

Dazzling fiction of universal appeal' Patrick White

'A work of considerable beauty and power...told with great honesty and virtuosity.' - New York Times Book Review

This is the story of Lilian Singer, born on 'a wild night in the year of Federation' into a stifling household which totally fails to subdue her.

Madness, cruelty and sexuality permeate the household but Lilian's sights are set on education, love and - finally - her own transcendent forms of independence.

Lilian Singer is, or becomes, that rare being: an eccentric true to her own self whose story reaches out to touch and delight the most discerning reader. She radiates energy and vitality through every page of this striking work. Lilian's Story is the most loved and enduring of Kate Grenville's fictional creations.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 5, 1986
      Lilian begins her book with her own birth and almost manages to conclude it from beyond the grave, but only occasionally exacts from the reader genuine interest in her affairs. In fact, she is a fat, lonely child who becomes a fat, eccentric (though, she insists, brilliant) woman. Her mother is afflicted by vapors, her father by pseudo-intellectuality and her younger brother by the shyness common to boys who wear glasses. Since it is hinted early on that Father's proclivities are not wholly cerebral, his incestuous attack upon Lilian is not a shock, but his subsequent insults and vituperations, culminating in his having her committed, seem without foundation. Although he accuses her of behaving like a whore, Lilian remains a virgin throughout and indeed, once out of the asylum, lives chastely with a drunken cabdriver until he dies. This award-winning first novel by Australian writer Grenville promises more than it delivers. Lilian's story, however, often has the quality of a dream recounted while the dreamer is half asleep. This alone is a remarkable achievement.

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  • English

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