Synopses & Reviews
Based on Jolley"s life, the Trilogybegins in England during WWII and follows Vera Wright as she leaves her cultivated, middle-class family behind and, through a series of unorthodox passionate affairs, eventually emigrates to Australia. Along the way, she has two children out of wedlock, falls in love with the male half of a variety of couples'"married, sister-brother, and seedy bohemian (one of ambiguous sexuality)'"and yearns for the love of various women, finally having a lesbian affair aboard the ship that is taking her'"now married and a doctor by profession--to Australia. The book is a modernist work, written in the first person, multi-layered and, though essentially linear, is interrupted by recurring passages of memory much like musical refrains. Highly personal, giving insight into the workings of the passions and the unlikely bonds people form, it also creates a vivid portrait of how life was lived (particularly by women) in England from the 1930s through the 1950s, from the Depression through wartime and beyond. Jolley"s prose is simple and evocative. She writes beautifully about nature, love, sexuality, loneliness, and the constraints imposed by society, whether by war or morality. While each individual volume has great merit'"not until now, when they are gathered together, can we appreciate the power of this compelling, complex, and haunting work.
Review
"Jolley makes the inner life of her protagonist the dramatic center of her work, giving the reader what feels like unfettered access to the emotional and psychological impact of any given moment." NewPages
Review
A work of emotional depth and beauty, which will be enjoyed by anyone who likes to wrap themselves in compelling, artful fiction.[A] lyrically written, imaginatively observed and emotionally compelling work.Full of mystery . . . [and] many, many pleasures—a string of characters worthy of Dickens, Jolley’s joy in nature, in the sense of place, her love of poetry and music. . . . something to re-read, again and again. --Roberta Silman
Review
It’s not often that I discover a writer who creates a character who I wish could be a real life friend….[The Vera Wright Trilogy] is a beautiful, rich, and layered masterpiece. --Nina Sankovitch
Review
Vera is a remarkable protagonist, a quiet rebel involved in a struggle with societal and familial expectations. . . . Jolley deserves to be counted among the great voices of the past century, and her trilogy deserves to be read, discussed, and adored.Jolley’s almost magical prose imbues the ordinary events of Vera’s life with an incandescent strangeness.The work of Elizabeth Jolley is a reminder of the glorious contradictions of literature: it's a specific chronicle and a universal exploration, endlessly experimental and easy to read, heartbreaking and hilarious and wise and naive. It's like life, and reading Jolley makes one feel alive. --Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket)
Review
Jolley transports us to ‘the twilight between the fact and the imagined’. . . .Just open this book to any page to see the strange, beautiful music she makes out of the raw material of her life. --Karen Russell, author of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
Review
"The most ambitious and accomplished work in Elizabeth Jolley's oeuvre." J. M. Coetzee
Synopsis
The concluding volume, The Georges Wife, is published here for the first time in the US. The first two volumes have long been out of print. North American readers can now experience the most ambitious and accomplished work in Jolley s oeuvre (J. M. Coetzee). "
Synopsis
Set in 1940s wartime England, the trilogy follows young Vera, who leaves her cultivated Midlands home to become a nurse in a military hospital and is catapulted into adulthood through unorthodox love entanglements with both men and women, two illegitimate children, and finally emigration to Australia, where, from her new vantage point--now a doctor and writer--she looks back on her life's journey. Combining the beauty of Virginia Woolf with the spare, heartbreaking insightfulness of Jean Rhys, the trilogy is both a literary tour de force and an accessible, universal portrait of a woman in search of sustaining love. The concluding volume, , is published here for the first time in the US. The first two volumes have long been out of print. North American readers can now experience "the most ambitious and accomplished work in Jolley's oeuvre" (J. M. Coetzee).
Synopsis
This moving masterpiece by one of Australia's leading novelists--now in its entirety--inaugurates Persea's series of Elizabeth Jolley revivals.
About the Author
Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007) is one of Australia's most celebrated writers, with a formidable international reputation, and during the 1980s and 1990s was widely acclaimed with a wide readership in the U. S. Born in England in 1923, she was brought up in a strict, German-speaking household and attended a Quaker boarding school. She became a nurse, married, and with three children moved to Western Australia in 1959. Although she wrote all her life, it was not until she was in her fifties that her books started to receive the recognition they deserved. Her work won every major award in Australia, and was several times selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Excerpts from her novels (including Cabin Fever, Book 2 in the Trilogy) were published in The New Yorker. Her novels include The Sugar Mother, Foxybaby, Miss Peabody's Inheritance, and Mr. Scobie's Riddle. Elizabeth Jolley died in 2007.