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Longlisted for the 2017 Stella Award
Outside, the rain continues unceasing; silver sheets sluicing down, the trees and shrubs soaking and bedraggled, the earth sodden, puddles overflowing, torrents coursing onwards, as the darkness slowly softens with the dawn.
Ester is a family therapist with an appointment book that catalogues the woes of the middle class. She spends her days helping others find happiness, but her own family relationships are tense and frayed. Estranged from both her sister, April, and her ex-husband, Lawrence, Ester wants to be able to let herself fall in love again. Meanwhile, April and Lawrence are battling through their own messy lives, and Ester and April's mother, Hilary, is facing the most significant decision she'll ever have to make.
Taking place over one rainy day in Sydney, and rendered with the evocative and powerful prose Blain is known for, Between a Wolf and a Dog is a novel about dissatisfactions and anxieties in the face of relative privilege. Yet it is also a celebration of the best in all of us — our capacity to live in the face of ordinary sorrows, and to draw strength from the transformative power of art. Ultimately, it is a joyous recognition of the profound beauty of being alive.
Caroline Baum's Review
There is so much sadness around this book, both real and imagined: Georgia Blain was recently diagnosed with a fatal kind of brain tumour. It is surely no coincidence that this book is pervaded with death - although in the novel, the woman doing the dying is Hilary, an older woman, the matriarch of the family, mother to two estranged sisters April and Ester. And because Blain's mother is none other than the much loved and respected journalist Anne Deveson, who went public with her diagnosis of dementia a while ago, it is tempting to see this fiction as Blain's version of how things might have been, had her mother had the capacity to take the end of her life into her own hands.
But no matter whether the story is personally close to the truth, it is told with great intelligence, sensitivity and nuance, in prose that beautifully captures the messes we make of our lives and our unpreparedness for the blows that are inevitably going to come. At times it reminded me of the way Margaret Drabble writes about British middle class family life, combining the smallest domestic detail with big questions and moral themes.
I wish the book, set over one rainy day in Sydney but punctuated with scenes set in the past, did not come freighted with such a huge burden of impending loss, because it is a distraction from the really accomplished poise and maturity in Blain's writing, in the scenes of sisterly rivalry and tension and in all the dynamics that makes families such intense nests of unspoken resentment, mistrust, grudges and human folly. One of her best creations is the character of Lawrence, who works as a pollster. Blain makes him professionally foolish in a completely plausible way.
About the Author
Georgia Blain (born 1964) is a contemporary Australian novelist, journalist and biographer.
Industry Reviews
ISBN: 9781925321111
ISBN-10: 1925321118
Published: 26th April 2016
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number of Pages: 320
Audience: General Adult
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Country of Publication: AU
Edition Number: 1
Dimensions (cm): 2.4 x 15.5 x 23.4
Weight (kg): 0.36
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