Synopses & Reviews
"The women whose small lives are chronicles here might be described as protofeminists . . . each is absorbed in making her own way in the world. . . . Superb."Kirkus Reviews
Abandoned by her feckless husband during the Depression, Amy decides to leave her country townand her three infant childrenand try her luck in the city.
Review
A beautiful little book, written with great gentleness and warmth.
Courier Mail
Olga Masters writes with freshness and brimming exuberance, and yet control over her material is absolute
Amys Children is a polished, moving story, one that touches the very roots of being and feeling without the barest hint of cliche.
John Carroll, Age
Amys Children offers a delightfully wicked view of female values and culture.
Bulletin
In Amys Children Masters has changed her background from rural to urban without changing her essential territorythe intense and private lives of women and girls.'
Adelaide Advertiser
Masters best work
[It] captures in photorealist detail the peeling facades of the inner city during the years when the Depression was supplanted by war
What makes this quiet novel so remarkable? Partly it is the language, as regular and minutely exact as Amys aunts hand-sewn buttonholes. But the real magic lies in the way such words are deployed
The sense of loss that pervades this final work is palpable.
Geordie Williamson
Polished, subtle and sustained. A classic Australian novel.
Eva Hornung
'Its a wonderful, warm, life-affirming book.'
Swiftly Tilting Planet
Synopsis
The moving, uncliched story of Amy, who leaves her three children in their grandmother's care while she seeks work.
About the Author
Olga Masters was born in rural Australia in 1919. Her first job, at seventeen, was at a local newspaper, where the editor encouraged her writing. She married at twenty-one and had seven children, working part-time as a journalist for papers such as the
Sydney Morning Herald, leaving her little opportunity to develop her interest in writing fiction until she was in her fifties.
In the 1970s Masters wrote a radio play and a stage play, and between 1977 and 1981 she won a series of prizes for her short stories. Her debut collection, The Home Girls, won a National Book Council Award in 1983. It was followed by a novel, Loving Daughters, which was highly commended for the same award. Her next books, the linked stories A Long Time Dying and the novel Amys Children, met with critical acclaim. This brief but highly prolific period ended when Masters died, following a short illness, in 1986. She had been at work on The Rose Fancier, a posthumously published collection of stories. Reporting Home, a selection of Masters extensive journalism, was published in 1990. A street in Canberra bears her name.
Eva Hornung lives in South Australia. Writing as Eva Sallis, she won the Australian/Vogel and Dobbie awards her first novel, Hiam.Mahjar won the Steele Rudd Award and The Marsh Birds won the Asher Literary Award. Her most recent novel, Dog Boy, won the Prime Ministers Literary Award for fiction and, in Sweden, the Stora Ljudbokspriset.