Latest Titles
-
IF YOU WERE MINE
Fiction (Literary Fiction) 312 pages
Random House Australia - September 2008
'Haunting and beautifully written; themes of love and loss are vividly explored.' -- Jane Rogers, author of MR WROE’S VIRGINS and THE VOYAGE HOME
'Lefevre is a great stylist and her landscapes are imposing…IF YOU WERE MINE is a tender, resonant achievement.' -- Rebecca Starford, Australian Book Review
On the fourteenth of February 1962, in the outback settlement of Sugarbag, Esther Hayes looked out of the schoolhouse window and saw three children struck by lightning. The boys were playing cricket on a strip of stubble field that did for a schoolyard; minutes earlier she had heard them laughing as they hammered in the wicket with a stone. Numbed by tragedy, Esther Hayes retreats into silence, while her young daughter, Aurora, is left to fend for herself. Aurora’s childhood is played out against the backdrop of her father’s absence and her mother’s neglect, and she is forced to take comfort wherever she can. The fierce attachments she forms never seem to last – until she abandons South Australia for Dublin’s Temple Bar, and the lush green countryside of her father’s native Tipperary.
IF YOU WERE MINE is a story of mothers and daughters, of the anguish of unexpected partings, and the intense delight that can descend out of the blue. -
NIGHTS IN THE ASYLUM
Fiction 312 pages
Picador - May 18, 2007
Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2008
‘NIGHTS IN THE ASYLUM is rich in vivid – often bleakly beautiful – imagery…A tale about home, loss, survival and what asylum – in all its forms – really means, Lefevre’s debut novel succeeds in getting right under your skin.’ --Tribune
If you believe that you will never become an asylum seeker, think again. Catastrophe can turn a comfortable life inside out and leave any one of us stranded and dependent on the kindness or cruelty of strangers, as the characters in this sensuous and moving novel discover…
Set in a mining town in the Australian outback, this is the story of a collision between Aziz, an illegal Afghan immigrant on the run from detention, and Miri, a woman who is lost in her own life. Miri flees from her grief at her daughter's death, and her husband's infidelity, to her Cuban grandmother's old house in a town where outsiders and any hint of eccentricity are viewed with suspicion. Then Zett Moran and her baby also seek refuge there from her abusive policeman husband, sparking off a chain of events that will disturb their already fragile peace. Subtly, beautifully written.
Biography
Carol Lefevre has had a music career in Australia, worked in television in New Zealand, and sang in folk-rock bands on the Isle of Man. She divides her time between the Isle of Man and Australia, and combines freelance writing and photography with doctoral studies at the University of Adelaide.
She has had short stories broadcast on radio, her story 'Flying Towards Thankfulness' was longlisted for the Bridgport Prize 2004 and she has completed a collection, FAULT LINES (ms available). Her contribution 'Kissing it Better' was one of the highlights of the Granta anthology on adoption FAMILY WANTED (edited by Sara Holloway).
Useful links
Related news
- Carol Lefevre's NIGHTS IN THE ASYLUM wins the People's Choice Award at the South Australian Writers' Festival
- Carol Lefevre’s NIGHTS IN THE ASYLUM nominated for the People’s Choice Awards
- Carol Lefevre's NIGHTS IN THE ASYLUM has won the Nita B Kibble Literary Award for Women Writers
- 3 Blake Friedmann titles shortlisted for Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2008
View all book clients