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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'When a young writer is hired to put together the life of an unknown artist from Geelong, of all places, she thinks it will be just another quick commission paid for by a rich, grieving family obsessed with their own past.
'But Edna Cranmer was not a privileged housewife with a paintbrush. Edna’s work spans decades. Her soaring images of red dirt, close interiors and distant jungles have the potential to change the way the nation views itself.
'Edna could have been an official war artist. Did she choose to hide herself away? Or were there people who didn’t want her to be famous? As the biographer is pulled into Edna’s life, she is confronted with the fact that how she tells Edna's past will affect her own future.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Large print.
- Dyslexic edition.
Works about this Work
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Black Swan
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 404 2018; (p. 34)'A short way into this intriguing novel, author Ruby J. Murray cites Virginia Woolf on the subject of biography. According to Murray’s protagonist, Woolf called it ‘a plodding art’: ‘Every life, she wrote, should open with a list of facts … a stately parade of the real. Births, deaths and marriages. Broken limbs, acquisitions, graduations, wars. Any interpretation of the facts, she said, is fiction. But the facts remain.’' (Introduction)
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Ruby J. Murray : The Biographer’s Lover
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 25-31 August 2015;'Ruby J. Murray is the grandniece of Arthur Boyd and she has written an attractive, slender novel about an obscure but very great painter and the young biographer who creates the artist’s posthumous reputation. This is a book where lurid family secrets and harrowing personal histories become the keys to the apprehension of the life’s work and illuminate its significance. It’s also about one artist who discovers herself by writing about another.' (Introduction)
-
Ruby J. Murray : The Biographer’s Lover
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 25-31 August 2015;'Ruby J. Murray is the grandniece of Arthur Boyd and she has written an attractive, slender novel about an obscure but very great painter and the young biographer who creates the artist’s posthumous reputation. This is a book where lurid family secrets and harrowing personal histories become the keys to the apprehension of the life’s work and illuminate its significance. It’s also about one artist who discovers herself by writing about another.' (Introduction)
-
Black Swan
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 404 2018; (p. 34)'A short way into this intriguing novel, author Ruby J. Murray cites Virginia Woolf on the subject of biography. According to Murray’s protagonist, Woolf called it ‘a plodding art’: ‘Every life, she wrote, should open with a list of facts … a stately parade of the real. Births, deaths and marriages. Broken limbs, acquisitions, graduations, wars. Any interpretation of the facts, she said, is fiction. But the facts remain.’' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2019 winner The Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist of the Year
- 2019 longlisted Colin Roderick Award