Carol Lefevre’s NIGHTS IN THE ASYLUM nominated for the People’s Choice Awards
February 10, 2009
Carol Lefevre's novel NIGHTS IN THE ASYLUM has been nominated by the committee of the South Australian Writers Festival for the People's Choice Awards, among authors such as Tim Sinclair and Rachel Hennessy.
The novels are judged by 31 book groups across the Adelaide metropolitan area and beyond. The members read and discuss the six nominated titles over a period of 12 months and eventually select the winner, who will be announced at the South Australian Writers Festival in September 2009. At the event the authors are invited to meet the book groups and talk about their work in a panel discussion.
Praise for Carol Lefevre's NIGHTS IN THE ASYLUM, which was shortlisted for the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book:
'An extremely moving and thought-provoking read.' -- Woman and Home
'Haunting tale' -- Dorset Echo
'Emotionally intense novel of broken hearts and lives gone astray' -- The Guardian
'The lucid prose plays on the senses in a painterly way, drawing on a rich palette of colours and textures to create each scene…you can almost smell the perfume of the tropical plants in the garden and sense the atmosphere in the old house…Lefevre is adept, too, at expressing the strong emotions of grief, fear, jealousy and love, and at unflinchingly confronting the darker side of small town life where bigotry against women, Aborigines and foreigners is at an equally low par. The finely wrought storyline is like one of Aziz's tribal rugs, each strand striving for resolution and contributing to the densely woven whole. The underlying message is a universal one - that the need for asylum comes in different guises and anyone could, one day, find themselves stranded, dependent on the kindness of strangers, or vulnerable to their cruelty.' -- Sue Woolley, Isle of Man Today
'NIGHTS IN THE ASYLUM is a remarkable novel, measured and meditative, sensual and seductive. Lefevre writes with an assured and convincing integrity, revealing her characters layer by layer, like the peeling away of an onionskin. At times bizarre and disturbing, on the surface the novel may seem to be about abuse, neglect, and the horrors of war. But it is so much more than that. Crossing the barriers of language and culture it is, above all, about hope, and love, and faith, the kind of faith that transcends borders or religions, and reminds us that we are all human.' -- Petra Fromm, Wet Ink