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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Crispin Clare returns to his ancestral home in Suffolk to recover from a tropical disease he contracted while working in the Pacific. His life is now one of quiet mornings and peaceful afternoons spent in the garden. Suffering physically and psychologically, Clare turns to writing as a source of therapy. Intrigued by the local folklore he re-examines his life and the world around him through myth and legend. Ouija-board conversations, illness-induced fever dreams and strange voices in his head blur the lines between reality and these mythic tales. Clare's road to recovery is full of twists and turns. Weaving old-English legends with contemporary fables, Stow creates an imaginative landscape unlike any other. The Girl Green as Elderflower is an exceptional story of loss and exile.'(Publication summary)
Notes
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Dedication: To C. in Suffolk
Even such midnight years must ebb; bequeathing this: a dim low English room, one window on the fields.
Cloddish ancestral ghosts plod in the drowning mist Black coral elms play host to hosts of shrill black fish.
My mare turns back her ears and hears the land she leaves as grievous music. 'Outrider' (1960)
Contents
- Introduction, single work criticism
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Braille.
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Autobiography of a Sickness
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 68 no. 1 2023; (p. 128-139) 'A disclosure: before being asked to do this lecture, I had never read a word of Stow. When I was nineteen, I left Western Australia to study in Singapore. When I graduated, I stayed. If leaving was an intentional turning away from a cultural lineage, or canon, then staying was a decisive choice towards another. Reading, after all, is political—more political, perhaps, than writing itself. Later, when I did return, and began to write, it was the Queer Singaporean and Singapore-based writers and artists I had encountered who formed my creative ancestry and who I felt I might exist in conversation with, if I were to exist in this space at all. But any residence forms lineages, and in returning to live on this land—where I hold legal citizenship, enforced by the world's dependence on borders and the nation-state, and where I was born—authorial ancestries are free to entangle, be speculated over and perhaps even transformed.' (Introduction)
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Telling Spaces: Reading Randolph Stow’s Expatriation
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 19 no. 1 2019;'Randolph Stow’s expatriate novels, Visitants (1979), The Girl Green as Elderflower (1980) and The Suburbs of Hell (1984) are often read as emerging from specific experiences in Stow’s expatriate life, beyond Australia—the two former as his ‘fever’ novels, informed by his work and illness in the Trobriand Islands and subsequent recovery in England; and the latter carrying the experience of an event from Stow’s Australian past into the setting of Harwich, England, where he lived from the early 1980s until his death in 2010. I have discussed elsewhere the overt connection in The Suburbs of Hell to Australia (Noske, ‘Chatter’), but it is also possible to read in the earlier texts connections with Stow’s life in Australia, particularly in his representation of landscape. Reading The Girl Green as Elderflower in this context opens interesting possibilities in understanding the spaces constructed within. This article will argue that Stow’s writing in the novel presents a complex transnationalism, one which challenges extant critical responses to Stow’s expatriation. It reads Stow’s place-making as embracing a fluidity that allows him to actively respond to postcolonialism as a global phenomenon and in doing so, examine Australian spaces through the lens of expatriation.' (Publication abstract)
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The Randolph Stow Memorial Lecture
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 64 no. 1 2019; (p. 142-150) 'It’s a great honour for me to be asked to give this memorial lecture for Randolph Stow. Thanks to the Westerly Centre and the Festival for inviting me. Stow’s writing has been a part of my life since my early twenties, when I was given the Penguin To the Islands (1962) as a birthday present. I didn’t know then that when Stow wrote it he was the same age as me reading it, or that it was his third published novel. After that, I read The Merry-go-Round in the Sea (1965) and Tourmaline (1963). Then in my early years here at the University of Western Australia (UWA) I first read two more: Visitants (1979) and The Girl Green as Elderflower (1980). Quite a few years later, after many re-readings, I think of Stow as a great artist, a poet amongst the English-language novelists of his time.' (Introduction) -
‘Chatter about Harriet’ : Randolph Stow’s Place-making and 'The Suburbs of Hell'
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 1 no. 18 2018;'Randolph Stow’s ‘English’ novels, The Girl Green as Elderflower (1980) and The Suburbs of Hell (1984) offer complex representations of space in text, which layer narrative and memory each over the other to inform the known setting. The resulting conceptualisation of place holds at its centre a transnational fluidity, which, when combined with the overt textual links between the stories and Stow’s own life, suggests a unique practice of place-making within his writing as an oeuvre. Reading Stow’s The Suburbs of Hell along these lines suggests it has a greater connection to a more general consideration of Australian narratives of place that might be assumed given its English setting. But what is specifically functioning within Stow’s writing practice to create places which embody this transnational mutability? This paper will examine Stow’s practice in writing for the purpose of understanding the manner in which the text constructs its setting, and whether or not reading these connections between Stow’s life and the text are productive of a cognizance of place-making in terms of writing practice.' (Publication abstract)
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Well Read
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 19 September 2015; (p. 28)
— Review of To the Islands 1958 single work novel ; The Girl Green as Elderflower 1980 single work novel ; Visitants 1979 single work novel ; The Suburbs of Hell : A Novel 1984 single work novel ; Tourmaline 1963 single work novel
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Spiritual Journeys Hold Plenty of Intrigue
1992
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 12 January 1992; (p. 19)
— Review of Corroboree 1984 single work novel ; Tourmaline 1963 single work novel ; To the Islands 1958 single work novel ; The Girl Green as Elderflower 1980 single work novel -
From Egypt to Papua New Guinea
1980
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 26 August vol. 101 no. 5226 1980; (p. 72,74)
— Review of The Possession of Amber 1980 selected work short story ; The Girl Green as Elderflower 1980 single work novel -
[Review] The Girl Green as Elderflower [and] Visitants
1980
single work
review
— Appears in: Kunapipi , vol. 2 no. 1 1980; (p. 184-185)
— Review of The Girl Green as Elderflower 1980 single work novel ; Visitants 1979 single work novel -
[Review] The Girl Green as Elderflower
1980
single work
review
— Appears in: The Times Literary Supplement , 16 May 1980; (p. 548)
— Review of The Girl Green as Elderflower 1980 single work novel -
[Review] The Girl Green as Elderflower
1980
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 27 1980; (p. 8-9)
— Review of The Girl Green as Elderflower 1980 single work novel -
Messiahs and Millennia in Randolph Stow's Novels
1981
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Kunapipi , vol. 3 no. 2 1981; (p. 56-72)'The novels I shall concentrate on in discussing messiahs and millennia in Stow's work are To the Islands, Tourmaline, Visitants, and The Girl Green as Elderflower. Tourmaline and Visitants are the two which most clearly relate to millenarian themes. Tourmaline records the growth, and collapse, of a millenarian cult centred on the messianic or would-be messianic figure of the diviner Michael Random. Visitants is a structurally more complex exploration of three millenarian visions and their communal and personal repercussions, although the connotations of the title are not restricted to cargo or flying saucer cults.' (Publication abstract)
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Ancestral Ghosts : An Interview with Randolph Stow
Roger Averill
(interviewer),
2003
single work
interview
— Appears in: New Literatures Review , Summer no. 39 2003; (p. 89-103) -
Vanishing Wunderkind
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 314 2009; (p. 29-31) -
'I have so many truths to tell' : Randolph Stow's Visitants and The Girl Green as Elderflower
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 26 no. 1 2011; (p. 20-32) -
Grievous Music : Randolph Stow's Middle Ages
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October - November vol. 26 no. 3-4 2011; (p. 102-114)
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cEngland,ccUnited Kingdom (UK),cWestern Europe, Europe,
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Suffolk,
cEngland,ccUnited Kingdom (UK),cWestern Europe, Europe,