Apt that Adelaide just this weekend held Speaking from the South conference. Led by Coetzee, it is (yet) another get-together of writers bemoaning the cultural dominance – ignorance born of presumed superiority – of the North. If Elizabeth Jolley had stayed in the UK, she would have become a famous writer and a band of academics would be milking her texts for their livelihood. But she moved to Perth on the west edge of Australia, thus damning her to a career which is monumentally underestimated. This is the third of hers I’ve read, and they keep getting better. The protagonist in this one engages our sympathy despite her being rather ghastly – or perhaps because. I kept thinking how like hers my life has been, right from the ways she is not happy as a child, not in the detail but in the sentiment. It was only after finishing it and looking around for people’s thoughts on it that I discovered it is the first of a trilogy. Number two is on my pile, but I have yet to spot number three at my usual bookshops. I’m expecting a lot of cringing as I carry on.
A little tea, a little chat 