 | |
| Author | Elizabeth Jolley |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Viking |
Publication date | 1989 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 171 pp. |
| ISBN | 0140111255 |
| Preceded by | The Sugar Mother |
| Followed by | Cabin Fever |
My Father's Moon (1989) is a novel by Australian writer Elizabeth Jolley. It was originally published by Viking in Australia in 1989. [1]
The novel was the first in the author's Vera Wright trilogy, preceding Cabin Fever (1990) and The Georges' Wife (1993).
During World War II Vera Wright is a young nurse training in a London hospital.
Reviewing the novel for The Canberra Times Marina Eldridge wrote that it "is centred firmly in Britain, Britain of half a century ago in which young Vera Wright comes to London to train as a nurse. Vera's rite of passage is lovingly portrayed as, with great imagination and control, the novel dips and sweeps between the present and the past, one incident recalling another, much as memory functions...Jolley's fans will recognise with pleasure the eccentric incidents and the array of quirky characters.." [2]
Writing about which Australian novel a reader should pick next for The Guardian, Carrie Tiffany chose this book and stated: "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...Read Elizabeth Jolley's My Father's Moon. You may want to go on and read the Vera Wright trilogy. You may want to go on and read and re-read Elizabeth Jolley, as I do, and as I will continue to do." [3]
After its original publication in 1989 in Australia by publisher Viking [4] the novel was later reprinted as follows:
The novel was also translated into German in 1994. [1]
The novel won the Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction (or Imaginative Writing) in 1989. [7]
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–1954), who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career (1901). She bequeathed her estate to fund this award. As of 2016, the award is valued at A$60,000.
Monica Elizabeth Jolley AO was an English-born Australian writer who settled in Western Australia in the late 1950s and forged an illustrious literary career there. She was 53 when her first book was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels, four short story collections and three non-fiction books, publishing well into her 70s and achieving significant critical acclaim. She was also a pioneer of creative writing teaching in Australia, counting many well-known writers such as Tim Winton among her students at Curtin University.
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The Age Book of the Year Awards were annual literary awards presented by Melbourne's The Age newspaper. The awards were first presented in 1974. After 1998, they were presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival. Initially, two awards were given, one for fiction, the other for non-fiction work, but in 1993, a poetry award in honour of Dinny O'Hearn was added. The criteria were that the works be "of outstanding literary merit and express Australian identity or character," and be published in the year before the award was made. One of the award-winners was chosen as The Age Book of the Year. The awards were discontinued in 2013. In 2021 The Age Book of the Year was revived as a fiction prize, with the winner announced at the Melbourne Writers Festival.
The Well Dressed Explorer (1962) is a Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Thea Astley. This novel shared the award with The Cupboard Under the Stairs by George Turner.
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Milk and Honey (1984) is a novel by Australian writer Elizabeth Jolley. It was originally published by Fremantle Press in Australia in 1984.
Mr Scobie's Riddle (1983) is a novel by Australian writer Elizabeth Jolley. It was originally published by Penguin Books in Australia in 1983.
Cabin Fever (1990) is a novel by Australian writer Elizabeth Jolley. It was originally published by Viking in Australia in 1990.
The Georges' Wife (1993) is a novel by Australian writer Elizabeth Jolley. It was originally published by Viking in Australia in 1993.