AustLit

'Raise your hand if you would rather read a novel than a self-help book. OK, hands down. Next question: can novels also show us how to parent, how to look after our parents, when to love and when to leave? Can they show us how to live a richer life?' (Introduction)

'Four women, four rich, adventurous lives. Catherine Anderson has a big, bold story to tell in The End of All Our Exploring. Anderson fleetingly meets Angus McDonald, a noted Australian photojournalist, in McLeod Ganj, high up in the Himalayas near the home of the Dalai Lama and his exiled followers. She explains, “All I wanted was to live and breathe in India.” Life is hard but stimulating and the scenery spectacular. Eventually she needs to extricate herself from a marriage with an illiterate, abusive ex-monk and leave. “I began to feel uncomfortable in a place that fed hungrily on the misfortune of an entire people — the Tibetans.” Anderson’s memoir is less self-absorbed, more outward looking, more cerebral, more invested in the world around her, than the other books here. However, hers too encompasses travel, love, illness, loss, death, grief and ways of dealing with the aftermath.' (Introduction)