{"title":"Beverley Farmer","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore the evocative and deeply engaging works of Beverley Farmer, a celebrated Australian writer renowned for her insightful storytelling and lyrical prose. In this collection, you will discover a range of books spanning various genres, including general fiction and historical fiction, each imbued with Farmer's characteristic depth and emotional resonance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Body of Water\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eAlone\u003c\/em\u003e delve into the complexities of human relationships and inner solitude, exploring themes of connection and isolation with poignancy and grace. Both novels offer an intimate glimpse into the lives of their characters, making them enduring pieces in Farmer's literary repertoire.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Bone House\u003c\/em\u003e, a unique gem within the collection, serves as a journey into self-reflection and personal growth. This work of self-help and personal development showcases Farmer's ability to blend narrative finesse with profound introspection, encouraging readers to explore their inner worlds.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Seal Woman\u003c\/em\u003e, a standout historical fiction, transports readers to distant times and places, weaving myth and reality into a captivating narrative tapestry. Its rich storytelling offers a compelling escape into history and legend.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLastly, \u003cem\u003eThis Water\u003c\/em\u003e continues Farmer's tradition of skilful storytelling with vivid imagery and emotional depth, highlighting her ability to traverse the human experience with keen insight and empathy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBeverley Farmer's collection offers a diverse reading experience, marked by her innovative use of language and ability to delve into the human psyche with remarkable clarity. Perfect for readers who appreciate thoughtful and reflective literature, these books invite you to lose yourself in the captivating worlds she creates.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"a-body-of-water-by-beverley-farmer-9781925818253","title":"A Body of Water","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eWinner of the Australian Book Design Award 2021: Best Designed Literary Fiction Cover\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA new edition of Beverley Farmer's out-of-print classic\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Body of Water\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e, which in its mixing of genres—essay, memoir, fiction, folk tale—opened up new frontiers for Australian literature.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Body of Water\u003c\/em\u003e was first published thirty years ago. The writing of the book takes place over a year and portrays a complete cycle in the writer's life. It begins on her forty-sixth birthday, in a period of emotional inhibition and loneliness. Her marriage has broken down, and she is living on her own. By the end of the cycle, the narrator has written short stories and poems, which are included in the book, alongside essays about the writing process, journal entries, excerpts from books she has been reading, spiritual meditations, and finely detailed observations of the life around her.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe title \u003cem\u003eA Body of Water\u003c\/em\u003e could be taken to refer to the book's settings along the Bellarine Peninsula in southern Victoria, with its bays, the outer harbour, and the lighthouse, standing like a sentinel at the entrance to the ocean. It also suggests the diverse material which fills the book, like a body of water with all that it contains and nurtures. Throughout, one is aware of the writer's own body, as an entity which shifts its identity like water, with its changes of mood, relationships, and reflections.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e'Beverley Farmer's expansive curiosity and appreciation for microcosmic significance sharpen a reader's attention to all things lived, dreamed, and observed.' - Josephine Rowe\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e'A bold and beautiful, genre-defying book, weaving together process and product, reflections on reading and the luminous moments of everyday life into a work that shimmers with allusion, insight, and charm. It remains as striking and important a book now as it was in its original context.' - Fiona Wright\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46710137618668,"sku":"9781925818253","price":37.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/18507863482873.jpg?v=1754129733"},{"product_id":"alone-by-beverley-farmer-9781923106031","title":"Alone","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA new edition of Beverley Farmer's classic 1980 debut, out of print for many years. \u003cem\u003eAlone\u003c\/em\u003e captures the emergence of one of Australia's most powerful and distinctive writers.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSet in Melbourne in the late 1950s, and taking place over the course of two days and nights, \u003cem\u003eAlone\u003c\/em\u003e chronicles the feelings of obsession and hopelessness, isolation and desire provoked by the ending of an intimate relationship. A young woman, a fledgling writer, recalls her passion for her female lover, who has left her. She is estranged from her family and has dropped out of university, and is contemplating ending her life. As she travels through the night-time streets, industrial areas, and boarding houses of a Melbourne fallen into economic depression and cultural malaise, she reflects on the days and months past that have brought her to despair.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWritten in a style threaded with gothic motifs, and shadowed by the constant threat of sexual violence, Beverley Farmer's debut novel captures the romantic intensity and ironic reversals of youthful longing. It displays her remarkable capacity for bringing different forms of writing together in a single work: prose and poetry, dialogue and dramatic monologue, as well as her reflections on other writers' work. Based partly on her own experiences, \u003cem\u003eAlone\u003c\/em\u003e shows the formation of a literary voice in writing that is both heightened and flowing, lyrical and precise.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePraise for Beverley Farmer:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e'As she explores the frailty of emotional experience, Farmer places her characters in a luminous domain of elemental sensual experience...' - Cassandra Pybus\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e'Beverley Farmer's expansive curiosity and regard for microcosmic significance sharpen a reader's attention to all things lived, dreamed, and observed.' - Josephine Rowe\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46710442131692,"sku":"9781923106031","price":34.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/19471433482872.jpg?v=1754145133"},{"product_id":"the-seal-woman-by-beverley-farmer-9781923106260","title":"The Seal Woman","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePortrait of a widow in mourning by one of Australia's most important women writers\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Seal Woman\u003c\/em\u003e was first published to acclaim in 1992 but has been out of print for many years. The novel explores the mind of a middle-aged Danish woman mourning the recent death of her husband at sea, in a cottage lent to her by friends in the seaside village in Victoria where she had spent her honeymoon. Farmer's prose is marked by the suppleness of its language, and its extraordinary attention to detail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDagmar's observations of the sea and its creatures, the light, the mist, the wind, and the life of plants are so intense and evocative, it is as if she has dissolved into her surroundings. On the other hand, her passivity leaves her vulnerable to the deceit of others, particularly the man she depends on as her lover. Her retreat into wonder is undercut by a persistent questioning, as to how far it might lead her into a state of submission.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Seal Woman\u003c\/em\u003e was originally published two years after \u003cem\u003eA Body of Water\u003c\/em\u003e, an imaginative montage of journal, commonplace book, stories, and poems, which it resembles in its own use of mixed sources, from myth and legend and history. In bringing these two books back into print, alongside Farmer's first work of fiction \u003cem\u003eAlone\u003c\/em\u003e, and her last books \u003cem\u003eThe Bone House\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThis Water\u003c\/em\u003e, Giramondo is building on its commitment, not only to this remarkable author, but to the republication of contemporary classics by Australian women authors.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46718102667500,"sku":"9781923106260","price":39.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/19473723482872.jpg?v=1754496990"},{"product_id":"the-bone-house-by-beverley-farmer-9781920882068","title":"The Bone House","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe three long essays that make up \u003cem\u003eThe Bone House\u003c\/em\u003e are an extended meditation on the life of the body and the life of the mind, each based on a single theme and woven out of the same few elemental symbols of earth, water, fire and blood, light and darkness.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhat does art know that we do not? How does the image have such a hold on us all? Alongside the urge to grasp the world, to abstract and delve, is the urge to make our visions known, somehow to fix the moment in time in its fullness of meaning. In the essays, this hoard of moments takes the form of a mosaic, composed of myth, poetry, and fable, of relics of the past, of explorations and illuminations and surface impressions. Set out like a commonplace book, they can be read in any sequence, or savoured for their detail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e‘Each passage feels individually, organically formed, sustained of its own history, its own air and light.’ - Josephine Rowe in \u003cem\u003eLitHub\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e‘Farmer uses language arrestingly, and is arrested by it, and imparts this throughout to her reader...Here is a book not to rush through, but to savour, to put down and pick up again. It's the kind of book that sends us to other books, to learn more.’ - \u003cem\u003eCanberra Times\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46868835434732,"sku":"9781920882068","price":34.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/25317593482871.jpg?v=1759771555"},{"product_id":"for-the-seasons-by-beverley-farmer-9781923106567","title":"For the Seasons","description":"\u003cp\u003eBeverley Farmer is one of our finest prose writers, but her new book, \u003ci\u003eFor the Seasons: Haikus\u003c\/i\u003e, is likely to make her reputation as a poet too. The manuscript of \u003ci\u003eFor the Seasons\u003c\/i\u003e, composed over twenty-five years ago, was rediscovered by the critic and scholar Lyn Jacobs after Farmer's death in 2018. The collection has never been published in full before. It joins the three prose works by Farmer Giramondo has now brought back into print: the novels \u003ci\u003eAlone\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Seal Woman \u003c\/i\u003eand the journal \u003ci\u003eA Body of Water\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe haikus collected in \u003ci\u003eFor the Seasons\u003c\/i\u003e are arranged in sections, beginning with Spring then progressing to Summer and Autumn and ending with Winter.  One is immediately struck by the delicacy of Farmer's observations, drawn from her immersion in the coastal landscape around Point Lonsdale on the Bellarine Peninsula in southern Victoria. The constraints imposed by the haiku form encourage attention to the finest details and textures  of light and colour, of air and sand and sea  and foster an awareness of the transient life they hold, its beauty, vitality and decay. The emotion is all in the detail, the 'I' barely features, yet the mood of the seasons, and their progression is keenly registered. Farmer's poetry is remarkable in this respect, modest, self-effacing, and yet revelatory in its intensity. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47288461000940,"sku":"9781923106567","price":32.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/abc18af8ada9d0172d9bfa22b9ec9917.jpg?v=1770631394"},{"product_id":"this-water-by-beverley-farmer-9781925336313","title":"This Water","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis Water\u003c\/em\u003e is likely to be the last work by Beverley Farmer, one of Australia's great prose stylists, and a pioneer of women's writing. Her exploration of feminine concerns and her use of different literary forms—novel, short story, poetry, essay, journal, myth, and fairy tale—are unparalleled.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis Water\u003c\/em\u003e is a collection of five tales, three of them novella length, each a fragmentary love story with a nameless woman at the centre, and a mythic dimension (Greek or Celtic, folklore or fable) rooted in the power of nature. Water and stone, ice and fire, light and darkness play an important role in all the stories, as do other motifs closely related to women's experience: blood, birth, possession and release, marriage and singularity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOne tale, set on the south coast of Victoria, is animated by the legend of the Great Silkie, following Sylvia Plath and Joan Baez. Another finds its rebellious princess in Lake Annaghmakerrig in Ireland. A third has Clytemnestra as its central figure, mourning the daughter sacrificed by her husband Agamemnon so that he can go to war with Troy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe stories contain and reflect and shadow one another: in each, the women speak, act, and think for themselves, opposing or escaping from situations ordained by authority.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBeverley Farmer is the author of three collections of short stories, including \u003cem\u003eMilk\u003c\/em\u003e, which won the NSW Premier's Award for Fiction, the writer's notebook \u003cem\u003eA Body of Water\u003c\/em\u003e, and two novels \u003cem\u003eThe Seal Woman\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe House in the Light\u003c\/em\u003e, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Her most recent book, \u003cem\u003eThe Bone House\u003c\/em\u003e, a collection of three long essays on the life of the body and the life of the mind, was published by Giramondo in 2005.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"Farmer uses language arrestingly, and is arrested by it, and imparts this throughout to her reader.\"\u003c\/em\u003e - Sara Dowse\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"An extraordinarily gifted and original talent.\"\u003c\/em\u003e - The Age\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"Farmer's prose, plangently beautiful and vivid with seashore and season, like poetry, invites dipping into and savouring again and again.\"\u003c\/em\u003e - Katharine England\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"As she explores the frailty of emotional experience, Farmer places her characters in a luminous domain of elemental sensual experience...\"\u003c\/em\u003e - Cassandra Pybus\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47341508853996,"sku":"9781925336313","price":34.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/13688463482873.jpg?v=1772192666"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/beverley-farmer.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}