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y separately published work icon What Was Left single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2013... 2013 What Was Left
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'When Rachel is pregnant with Lola, she imagines motherhood will involve pushing her sleeping infant in a pram through sun-dappled parks, suffused with the purest love she has ever felt. Then she gives birth to a screaming, colicky child in a country far from home.

'Feeling isolated and unsupported, she is plagued with thoughts of hurting her daughter. This is the story of what happens next.

'Lola is angry. Lola is hungry. Lola spits the dummy that Rachel offers up, screams louder. A man in a suit walking past gives her a look. A shut-up-your-baby kind of look.

'"Oh Lola", Rachel says, and grits her teeth to the hard slats of the bench, the painful pull of Lola's mouth. She blinks away the watery world. Above, the currawong starts up again. That eerie, weary echoing song.

'Lola doesn't look up, just works her jaw, her mouth, one hand rested on Rachel's chest. Her fingers are as wide as they will spread, as if to say, you - all of this - everything - mine.

'Limprecht writes a very different portrayal of the person who is so frequently the villain in our culture: the mother who abandons her child. Dark, honest and true, this is an extraordinary novel about parenthood and identity. ' (Publisher's blurb)

Exhibitions

Notes

  • Epigraph:

    How strange it is to squander
    This birth I have found by some coincidence.
    ...I have not granted fearlessness to the frightened
    And I have not given happiness to the weak.
    All I have given rise to is
    The agonies in the mother's womb, and to suffering.

    Shantideva, Bodhisattvacharyavatara


    Of all the little ways I've found to hurt myself
    Well you might be my favorite one of all.

    Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, 'Tennessee'

  • Dedication: For Nancy, who is still my first reader.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Collingwood, Fitzroy - Collingwood area, Melbourne - North, Melbourne, Victoria,: Sleepers Publishing , 2013 .
      image of person or book cover 7898388874022321701.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 255p.
      Note/s:
      • Published: 1st September 2013
      ISBN: 9780987507075
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Untapped , 2021 .
      image of person or book cover 4440555546221087463.png
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 1v.p.
      ISBN: 9781922749543

Works about this Work

Misery When Baby Love Goes Missing Ashley Hay , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 28-29 September 2013; (p. 18-19)

— Review of What Was Left Eleanor Limprecht , 2013 single work novel
What Was Left Kerryn Goldsworthy , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 28-29 September 2013; (p. 32)

— Review of What Was Left Eleanor Limprecht , 2013 single work novel
What Was Left Kerryn Goldsworthy , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 28-29 September 2013; (p. 32)

— Review of What Was Left Eleanor Limprecht , 2013 single work novel
Misery When Baby Love Goes Missing Ashley Hay , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 28-29 September 2013; (p. 18-19)

— Review of What Was Left Eleanor Limprecht , 2013 single work novel
Last amended 6 Dec 2021 16:37:29
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