From the author of the multi-award-winning bestseller Between a Wolf and a Dog, a powerful collection of previously unpublished stories.
A sister is haunted by the consequences of a simple mistake. A daughter searches for certainty as her mother's memory degrades. An encounter at a house party changes the course of a life.
In We All Lived in Bondi Then, beloved Australian author Georgia Blain returns to her resonant themes of relationships and family, illness and health, love and death. Composed in Blain's final years, these nine stories grapple with large questions on a human scale, brimming with her trademark acuity, nuance, and warmth.
' We All Lived in Bondi Then never wallows in sentimentality; instead, its portraits of the ordinary toils of life are glassy-clear and smooth, making the scarce moments of optimism or humour almost euphoric ... The collection offers readers a final gift of the lucid, observant, occasionally wry examination of modern life and the human condition for which Blain is celebrated.'
-Anica Boulanger-Mashberg, Books+Publishing
Praise for Between a Wolf and a Dog-
'Blain just gets better and better. The clarity, warmth and precision of Between a Wolf and a Dog brings to mind the formal beauty of an exquisitely cut gemstone. Blain looks at the big questions - mortality, grief, forgiveness - through the lens of one family's everyday struggle to love each other. This portrait of marriage and work, of sisterhood, mothers, and daughters is resolute and clear-eyed; so commanding and beautifully written it made me cry.'
-Charlotte Wood, author of The Natural Way of Things
Praise for Museum of Words-
'Museum of Words is not a memoir of dying, although it is about illness and treatment, and the impossibility of saying goodbye. It moves between its subjects, using the writer's illness reflexively, leading into description of the things most important to her ... A fine book that looks chaos directly in the face and attempts to record it.'
-Tegan Bennett Daylight, Sydney Morning Herald
About the Author
Georgia Blain published novels for adults and young adults, essays, short stories, and a memoir. Her first novel was the bestselling Closed for Winter, which was made into a feature film. Her books have been shortlisted for numerous awards including the NSW, Victorian, and SA Premiers' Literary Awards, the ALS Gold Medal, the Stella Prize, and the Nita B. Kibble Award for her memoir Births Deaths Marriages. Georgia's works include The Secret Lives of Men, Too Close to Home, and the YA novel Darkwater. In 2016, Georgia published Between a Wolf and a Dog and the YA novel Special (Penguin Random House Australia). Between a Wolf and a Dog was shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize, and was awarded the 2017 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction and the 2016 University of Queensland Fiction Book Award. Georgia passed away in December 2016.
Industry Reviews
Praise for Between a Wolf and a Dog:
'Blain just gets better and better. The clarity, warmth and precision of Between a Wolf and a Dog brings to mind the formal beauty of an exquisitely cut gemstone. Blain looks at the big questions - mortality, grief, forgiveness - through the lens of one family's everyday struggle to love each other. This portrait of marriage and work, of sisterhood, mothers, and daughters is resolute and clear-eyed; so commanding and beautifully written it made me cry.'
-- Charlotte Wood, author of The Natural Way of Things
Praise for Between a Wolf and a Dog:
'Between a Wolf and a Dog is an elegantly told story describing the ambiguities within human relationships. Each evening, when my children slept, I would enter the world of this book - coming to know a flawed, courageous, and creative family of characters, as they struggled to be good, to be whole, and finally, to let go.'
-- Sofie Laguna, author of The Eye of the Sheep
Praise for Between a Wolf and a Dog:
'Blain is a writer of such lucidity and strength that her characters speak, undeniably, for themselves ... What make it possible to contain tragedy in words, so that the reader enters into the experience and passes through it, cleansed? The Greek playwrights had their own answers to this question; but the question, I suspect, is far older than their version of it. Each generation of authors must find the right words for writing about death. Part of the reason Between a Wolf and a Dog succeeds so well is that everything in the novel is heartfelt without being in the least sentimental.'
-- Dorothy Johnston * Sydney Morning Herald *
Praise for Museum of Words:
'Museum of Words is not a memoir of dying, although it is about illness and treatment, and the impossibility of saying goodbye. It moves between its subjects, using the writer's illness reflexively, leading into description of the things most important to her ... [A] fine book that looks chaos directly in the face and attempts to record it.'
-- Tegan Bennett Daylight * Sydney Morning Herald *
Praise for Museum of Words:
'A fine short memoir that looks both inward and outward to tell a patchwork story of four women and their shifting relationships with one another and with words, their medium for living ... She does not try to make sense of what was happening and does not rail against fate's cruelty. She does not argue for voluntary euthanasia and even notes that her mother, once an advocate, went quiet on the subject after she became ill. Blain simply continues to write, her voice faltering only occasionally, until her final sentence.'
-- Susan Wyndham * Weekend Australian *
Praise for Museum of Words:
'A powerful meditation on the power of language and writing ... wise, tender, and heart-rending.'
-- Nicole Abadee * The Australian Financial Review Magazine *
