AustLit

'Taking the reader from Victoria’s wild shipwreck coast to the artists’ studios of revolutionary Paris and the bloody battlefields of Flanders, this sweeping novel reimagines the volatile history of the beautiful and enigmatic young woman immortalised in one of Australia’s most iconic paintings. Created in Paris in 1875, Chloé, Jules Lefebvre’s depiction of a naked water nymph, was brought to Melbourne’s Young & Jackson Hotel in 1909, where it has hung ever since.

'In this passionate, luminous retelling, Katrina Kell seeks to unlock the riddle behind the girl on the canvas, known to history only as Marie. In doing so, she weaves the compelling story of an incandescent spirit – a woman with the strength to defy the boundaries of class and convention in order to survive, and an enduring power to influence the lives of others across time and distance.' (Publication summary)

'The nude painting Chloe, created in 1875 by French artist Jules Lefebvre, which has hung at Young and Jackson Hotel since 1909, is a much-loved Melbourne cultural icon. Chloe has been the subject of controversy and mythologising, particularly in relation to the Parisian model who sat for the painting. This production-based thesis, through a work of historical fiction and an exegesis, imaginatively renders and recontextualises Lefebvre’s Chloe to illustrate how these myths have, in part, contributed to reductive portrayals and interpretations of both the painting and its model.

'The manuscript “Capturing Chloe” is a fictional narrative tracing Chloe’s impact on an Australian family during World War One, and the volatile world of Jules Lefebvre’s Parisian model, as she and other proletarian women determine to challenge the social and political forces that oppress them in the aftermath of the Second French Empire and the Franco-Prussian War.

'The exegesis uses textual analysis and historical research to interrogate the origins of Chloe, and the source of myths that have variously constructed or constituted identities for the painting’s model. While exploring shifting ideas about the model’s identity since the painting’s debut in 1875, this analysis demonstrates the significance of textual artefacts in the ongoing process of reinterpreting and remaking Chloe. The exegesis explores an anecdote Lefebvre shared about his model, and a tale the Anglo-Irish writer George Moore wrote about “Lefebvre’s Chloe” in his memoirs. This work describes Moore’s student days in Paris, and his mythologising of a young woman who, I propose, may have been the model for Chloe.

'By recontextualising, reimagining and rewriting myths about Chloe’s model, and exploring the painting’s origins and its reception by Australian viewers throughout the decades, this thesis contributes new insights into and an original understanding of one of Australia’s most celebrated cultural icons.'

Source: Abstract.

'Von's mom, Charlene, has been gone for ten years when, out of the blue, she asks him to visit her in New Zealand. Charlene's a dancer at a Wellington nightclub. Her partner is running from the cops, and she is struggling to keep her two-year-old daughter Stella. Von finds himself trapped in his mother's chaotic world, spending every night at home playing parent to Stella. Still, it's not too bad on Cuba Street. Von likes the quirky people who live there. But when things go badly wrong, Von's drawn to the home of his Moriori ancestors where the old ones wait to help him, if he has the strength to listen to them.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Jenna Stewart–Juice–and her friends, are young athletes with dreams of success at the highest level. Juice has her sights set on gold in the Olympic one hundred meters, but rivalry, the demands of school and home, and the possibility of a new relationship threaten to get in the way. Juice learns that sometimes dreams come at a high price.' (Publication summary)