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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Somewhere in the kaleidoscope between life and art sits Clare, whose story is Marion Halligan's The Fog Garden. Clare, like Marion, is a woman of a certain age whose much-loved husband of thirty-odd years has just died. And Clare, like Marion, is a novelist.
'With the loss of such a marriage of true minds and kindred spirits Clare finds herself building a 'cathedral of grief' - and reeling into the arms of an old friend. Life and writing loop and spiral around Clare and the central enormous fact of her husband's death.
'The Fog Garden is a rollercoaster of a story about the nature of fiction and how life creates art, how adultery can be liberating and how sex doesn't stop with age, and how grief is as much a gift as love.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Notes
-
- Dedication: For Lucy and Jame
- Sound recording available
Contents
* Contents derived from the
Crows Nest,
North Sydney - Lane Cove area,
Sydney Northern Suburbs,
Sydney,
New South Wales,:Allen and Unwin
, 2001 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
- The Fog Garden : Lapping, single work autobiography (p. 1-8)
- The Fog Garden : Introduction, single work autobiography (p. 9-10)
- Vermilion : A Short Story Vermilion, single work short story (p. 38-55)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
-
Greek Olives and Italian Prosciutto on Crusty French Bread : Food in Contemporary Fiction by Australian Women
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , vol. 2 no. 2010; 'Women have often had a troubled relationship with food, but in recent decades there has been a bit of a turn around - at least in fictional terms. In some earlier Australian feminist fiction from the 1970s and 1980s, women were often portrayed as oppressed by, or resistant to, food and eating. Here I explore food in Kate Grenville's Lilian's Story, Andrea Goldsmith's Gracious Living, and two works by Helen Garner - The Children's Bach and Cosmo Cosmolino. In these stories women refrain from eating, or over indulge, as forms of resistance to oppression. But times have changed. This essay examines the changing nature of how food is represented in fiction by Australian women. The later novels explored here - Drusilla Modjeska's The Orchard, Marion Halligan's The Fog Garden, Stephanie Dowrick Tasting Salt and Amanda Lohrey's Camille's Bread (1995) - significantly reframe food preparation and consumption as positive experiences that promote women's independence, and contribute to their creative lives and personal relationships. These later texts transcend the earlier view of domesticated women as anxious or resistant consumers of food. Instead, food is aesthetically rich and sensually rewarding; a controllable and pleasurable experience promoting health, wellbeing, and positive loving relationships. (Author's abstract) -
Writing Food Writing Fiction Writing Life : Marion Halligan's Memoirs
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Unsociable Sociability of Women's Lifewriting 2010; (p. 168-186) -
Love, Actually
2007
single work
prose
— Appears in: The Australian Literary Review , April vol. 2 no. 3 2007; (p. 25) Meanjin , April vol. 66 no. 1 2007; (p. 209-214) Marion Halligan asserts that it is 'the ordinary business' of the novelist 'to decide which material will form the basis of the stories she has in mind. Mine are essentially domestic, they are about life and death, love, marriage, birth, temptation, all the everyday things, and the everyday is a rich source of images'. -
'A Language We All Speak' : Food in Marion Halligan's Writing
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Kunapipi , vol. 28 no. 2 2006; (p. 162-171)'Marion Halligan describes her memoir, A Taste of Memory, as a set of stories of her life in food, travel and especially gardens, those 'nourishing spaces'; but it also commemorates her husband, Graham, and their thirty-five year marriage. Food and gardens often appear as related themes in Halligan's fiction, where gardens symbolise suburban domestic space and food may be used to express both desire and social connection. This essay explores how, in A Taste of Memory and the two novels immediately preceding it, The Fog Garden and The Point, food and gardens are linked to themes of bereavement and loss.' - Kunapipi (p. 183).
-
Politics and Monomania
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Overland , Spring no. 184 2006; (p. 48-56)
-
Books
2001
single work
review
— Appears in: Muse , May no. 206 2001; (p. 15)
— Review of The Fog Garden 2001 single work novel -
Blast Books
2001
single work
review
— Appears in: Blast , Autumn no. 44 2001; (p. 27)
— Review of Undertow 2001 single work novel ; The Fog Garden 2001 single work novel ; The Artful Dole Bludger : Was It Arthur or Martha? 2000 single work novel -
Critical Grief : Walking the Personal/Public Tightrope in the Novels of Marion Halligan and Carol Shields
2005
single work
review
— Appears in: Quodlibet : The Australian Journal of Trans-National Writing , March no. 1 2005;
— Review of The Fog Garden 2001 single work novel Critical review of Marion Halligan' s The Fog Garden and Canadian writer Carol Shield' s Unless, works in which the writers express in different ways their grief and outrage in response to extreme life crises. -
A Playful, Moving Memorial of Grief
2001
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 17 March 2001; (p. 7)
— Review of The Fog Garden 2001 single work novel -
Acts of Bravery in Grief's Cathedral
2001
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 17 March 2001; (p. 7)
— Review of The Fog Garden 2001 single work novel -
Intertextuality : The White Garden, The Orchard and The Fog Garden
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: 'Unemployed at Last!' : Essays on Australian Literature to 2002 for Julian Croft 2002; (p. 161-174) Walker's article discusses and compares three women's narrative, all focussing on gardens and orchards as signifiers of feminie regeneration. With their mixture of genres and sources, the texts are seen as examples of a movement in fiction towards complexity, towards 'the layering of history, essay, autobiography, folk-tale and original story-telling into dense and complicated narratives' (161), where fact and fiction are shown to be related and dependent upon one another, and are woven into a pattern which gives a new meaning to the concept of intertextuality. -
Bearing Fruit in a Garden City
2006
single work
column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 4 February 2006; (p. 11) -
Tears and Cheers : Kate Llewellyn Reveals the Books that Tested Her Emotions
2006
single work
column
— Appears in: The Age , 25 February 2006; (p. 28) -
Politics and Monomania
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Overland , Spring no. 184 2006; (p. 48-56) -
Love, Actually
2007
single work
prose
— Appears in: The Australian Literary Review , April vol. 2 no. 3 2007; (p. 25) Meanjin , April vol. 66 no. 1 2007; (p. 209-214) Marion Halligan asserts that it is 'the ordinary business' of the novelist 'to decide which material will form the basis of the stories she has in mind. Mine are essentially domestic, they are about life and death, love, marriage, birth, temptation, all the everyday things, and the everyday is a rich source of images'.
Awards
- 2012 shortlisted The National Year of Reading 2012 Our Story Collection — Australian Capital Territory
- 2002 shortlisted Kibble Literary Awards — Nita Kibble Literary Award
Last amended 27 May 2020 07:24:51
Subjects:
- Canberra, Australian Capital Territory,
Common subjects:
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