AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This book is a love story, a political memoir, a parallel journey into and through grief and loss. It goes inside Cabinet and inside the heart. It wonders why we don't make enough room in our lives for death. A Minister and a mother loses her mate, almost loses her mind. Mary Delahunty is a celebrity journalist elected to Parliament, sparkling in the breathless publicity of an ALP ‘Star recruit'. In under a year the party wins the election Jeff Kennett couldn't lose and she is thrust, with her startled new colleagues, into Government. Dubbed a team ‘on training wheels' the Bracks' government sets about restoring services to a Victoria brittle with anger. MD becomes Minister for Education and the Arts. The fairy dust fades though when her soul mate, husband and father of their two children is struck down with a rampant cancer. This is a meditation on how a public figure copes, or fails to cope with private grief, during the long dying and the unending absence. It explores our society's deep disdain for death and sickness and how the gladiatorial dark arts of politics don't pause for anyone. Mary Delahunty is honest and entertaining about her mistakes, her political unravelling, her ‘sacking' and the understanding of a new shape of life after ‘the bear pit'. This is a compelling read as a charmed life comes spectacularly undone in public.' (Publisher's description)
Notes
-
Dedication: For Nick and Olivia / So they will know their father / My father was a storyteller, my mother a writer / This book also honours them
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Renewal
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 325 2010; (p. 21)
— Review of Public Life, Private Grief 2010 single work autobiography -
Delahunty's Life in Context
2010
single work
column
— Appears in: The Australian , 7 September 2010; (p. 14) -
Of Love and Loss
2010
single work
column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 27 August 2010; (p. 4) -
Everything about Mary, and More
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 28 August 2010; (p. 23) The Sydney Morning Herald , 28-29 August 2010; (p. 35)
— Review of Public Life, Private Grief 2010 single work autobiography -
Fallen Star
2010
single work
biography
— Appears in: Good Weekend , 21 August 2010; (p. 29, 31-32, 35)
-
Everything about Mary, and More
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 28 August 2010; (p. 23) The Sydney Morning Herald , 28-29 August 2010; (p. 35)
— Review of Public Life, Private Grief 2010 single work autobiography -
Renewal
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 325 2010; (p. 21)
— Review of Public Life, Private Grief 2010 single work autobiography -
Caught in the Web
2010
single work
column
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 22 August 2010; (p. 15) -
Delahunty Memoir Reveals Developer Sway on Planning
2010
single work
column
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 22 August 2010; (p. 3) -
Fallen Star
2010
single work
biography
— Appears in: Good Weekend , 21 August 2010; (p. 29, 31-32, 35) -
Of Love and Loss
2010
single work
column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 27 August 2010; (p. 4) -
Delahunty's Life in Context
2010
single work
column
— Appears in: The Australian , 7 September 2010; (p. 14)
- Melbourne, Victoria,
-
cAustralia,c
- ca. 1995-2010