DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

One Life

My Mother's Story

Kate Grenville author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Canongate Books

Published:25th Feb '16

Should be back in stock very soon

One Life cover

This vivid, intimate, narrative memoir celebrates the life of best-selling and award-winning novelist Kate Grenville's mother. Now a gorgeous paperback

A vivid, intimate, narrative memoir celebrating the life of Booker Prize-shortlisted and Women's Prize-winning Australian novelist Kate Grenville's mother

*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024*
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST

Kate Grenville often takes inspiration for her fiction from her family history and this extraordinary memoir about the life of her own mother, Nance Russell, reveals why.

Born to an unhappy marriage and into a deeply sexist society, Nance worked hard for everything she had, and while the world changed around her, she went on to university, opening businesses and raising a family.

One Life is just as much a universal story as it is Nance's. Beautifully captured by her daughter, it draws on the tales passed down by word of mouth, creating an evocative portrait of life in twentieth-century rural Australia and a deeply intimate and caring homage to a mother's struggle.

Wonderful * * Independent * *
A work of imaginative sympathy, it is as successful as it is audacious . . . Clear, authentic and utterly engaging . . . A microcosm for the changes taking place on the world stage in the period spanned * * Independent on Sunday * *
Kate Grenville is one of Australia's finest writers . . . her great skill as a writer is to take the barest of biographical details and spin them into something of intricate moral complexity * * Telegraph * *
A compelling read . . . very moving . . . Grenville's feminist instincts, which run quietly through her life and writing, built on her mother's example * * Sydney Morning Herald * *
Grenville inhabits characters with a rare completeness . . . She writes with a poet's sense of rhythm and imagery * * Guardian * *
Grenville has emerged not only as the truth-teller but also something of a hero . . . her novels are important quests that go beyond art * * Irish Times * *
The power with which Kate Grenville evokes places and people is so remarkable -- DIANA ATHILL
Kate Grenville has a reputation for elegant prose that cuts to the very heart of her subject matter with breathtaking precision * * Vogue * *
We are given the portrait of a woman whole. I adored her and the way Grenville wrote about her from every angle * * Savidge Reads * *

ISBN: 9781782116875

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 18mm

Weight: 195g

288 pages

Main