Synopses & Reviews
Janet is a skeptic, a journalist; Maxine revels in New Age fantasies; and Ray, a drifter, is a born-again Christian. The common ground is the house they share. But their fragile domestic balance is about to explode.
Cosmo Cosmolino explores our search for meaning amid the complicatedand often hilariousbackground of house-sharing.
Synopsis
The fragile domestic balance of a share house is exploded in this classic Australian novel about friendship, faith and miracles.
About the Author
Helen Garner is one of Australia's most awarded and highly regarded writers. She was born in 1942 in Geelong, and was educated there and at Melbourne University. She taught in Victorian secondary schools until 1972, when she was dismissed for answering her students questions about sex, and had to start writing journalism for a living.
Her first novel, Monkey Grip, came out in 1977, won the 1978 National Book Council Award, and was adapted for film in 1981. Since then Garner has published novels, short stories, essays, and feature journalism. Her screenplay The Last Days of Chez Nous was filmed in 1990. Garner has won many prizes, among them a Walkley Award for her 1993 article about the murder of two-year-old Daniel Valerio. In 1995 she published The First Stone, a controversial account of a Melbourne University sexual harassment case. Joe Cinques Consolation (2004) was a non-fiction study of two murder trials in Canberra.
In 2006 Helen Garner received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature. Her most recent novel, The Spare Room (2008), won numerous prizes and has been translated into many languages.
Helen Garner lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Ramona Koval is a writer, journalist and broadcaster. She is the editor of Best Australian Essays and was the presenter of ABC Radio Nationals The Book Show. Her most recent book was Speaking Volumes: Conversations with Remarkable Writers, a collection of her international literary interviews.