AustLit
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Vera is young, awkward and naive. As a schoolgirl, she has her sheltered idealism, her Quaker boarding-school education, and the warm, enveloping sense of security of her parents. As a student nurse during the war, her transition into womanhood is rapid, painful and disastrous. And as an unmarried mother she flees from the nagging tension of her home and the hospital gossip to Fairfields, a place of poetry, music and of people with interesting lives and ideas. Quickly she learns it is otherwise. Yet, for Vera, there is always the moon — her companion, comforter, and the unbreakable link with her father...' (Publisher's blurb, 2008 Penguin publication.)
Notes
-
Also published in braille and sound recording formats.
-
Book 1 of the My Father's Moon Trilogy.
Contents
* Contents derived from the
Camberwell,
Camberwell - Kew area,
Melbourne - Inner South,
Melbourne,
Victoria,:Penguin
, 2008 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
- Introduction, single work criticism
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
The Australian Book to Read Next : My Father's Moon by Elizabeth Jolley
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 10 July 2020;'It is proof of a fine novel when its characters enter your spirit as you are reading and take up residence there. The experience is akin to falling in love. You are vividly enveloped by thoughts of another. They are alive inside you, perceiving the world with you, breath by breath. It is the most intimate of feelings. Film can’t achieve this, or theatre, or visual art; perhaps music gets closest. It’s only the novel that can show you the grain of another’s soul.' (Introduction)
-
Jolley's Women
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 24 no. 1 2009; (p. 111-120) The essay about Jolley's women 'looks at the ways in which Jolley represents women's longing for other women; it argues that this longing is central to her representation of female characters and the feminine condition. Jolley's literary style, her writing method, makes this question of longing and desire both complex and ambiguous' (112). -
Friendship in a Time of Loneliness
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 24 no. 1 2009; (p. 97-110) The essay 'explores the ways in which Jolley's fictions are simultaneously motivated by a longing for consummate love - (hetero)sexual, intellectual, spiritual, all at once - and shaped by a gathering understanding of the impossibility of that desire as a way of being in the world' (98-99). -
Introduction
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: My Father's Moon 2008; -
A Scattered Catalogue of Consolation
2006
single work
autobiography
— Appears in: Learning to Dance : Elizabeth Jolley : Her Life and Work 2006; (p. 17-53)
-
Untitled
1990
single work
review
— Appears in: Margin , no. 22 1990; (p. 33-34)
— Review of My Father's Moon 1989 single work novel -
Extra to Real Life
1998
single work
criticism
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 200 1998; (p. 45-46)
— Review of My Father's Moon 1989 single work novel ; The Georges' Wife 1993 single work novel ; Cabin Fever 1990 single work novel -
Diverse Voices
1990
single work
review
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , April vol. 9 no. 1 1990; (p. 58-60)
— Review of My Father's Moon 1989 single work novel ; The Fortunes of Mary Fortune 1989 selected work autobiography prose ; The New Diversity : Australian Fiction : 1970-88 1989 selected work criticism ; In the Winter Dark 1988 single work novel ; City to City 1989 selected work short story ; Flawless Jade 1989 single work novel ; Eight Voices of the Eighties : Stories, Journalism and Criticism by Australian Women Writers 1989 anthology criticism extract short story autobiography correspondence prose review interview -
Body Language
1989
single work
review
— Appears in: Southerly , December vol. 49 no. 4 1989; (p. 654-660)
— Review of My Father's Moon 1989 single work novel ; Broken Words 1988 single work novel ; Working Hot : A Novel 1989 single work novel -
Capturing the Essence
1989
single work
review
— Appears in: The Adelaide Review , May no. 63 1989; (p. 20-21)
— Review of My Father's Moon 1989 single work novel ; The Sugar Mother 1988 single work novel -
Babies Eat Their Lace : Elizabeth Jolley and the Slaughter of Decorum
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: After Electra : Rage, Grief and Hope in Twentieth-Century Fiction 2002; (p. 118-136, notes 194-195) -
Humour in Elizabeth Jolley's My Father's Moon
1995-1996
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Commonwealth Review , vol. 7 no. 1 1995-1996; (p. 101-106) -
A Scattered Catalogue of Consolation
2006
single work
autobiography
— Appears in: Learning to Dance : Elizabeth Jolley : Her Life and Work 2006; (p. 17-53) -
Introduction
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: My Father's Moon 2008; -
Friendship in a Time of Loneliness
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 24 no. 1 2009; (p. 97-110) The essay 'explores the ways in which Jolley's fictions are simultaneously motivated by a longing for consummate love - (hetero)sexual, intellectual, spiritual, all at once - and shaped by a gathering understanding of the impossibility of that desire as a way of being in the world' (98-99).
Awards
- 1989 winner The Age Book of the Year Award — Fiction Prize
- 1989 winner 3M Talking Book of the Year Award
Last amended 25 Nov 2019 16:18:13
Settings:
-
cEngland,ccUnited Kingdom (UK),cWestern Europe, Europe,
- 1940s
Export this record
