AustLit

'Donna Ward’s piano was stranded in the middle of her study. She’d pushed it out from one wall but couldn’t get it to the other side. Two friends, a couple, came to dinner. As they were leaving, they noticed the piano. “This is a time when you ask your friends to help,” they advised her – and left without helping. The anecdote of the marooned piano is a nutshell-sized metaphor for the life that Ward – a writer, publisher and psychotherapist – lives without husband or family. It was not her plan; she’d always hoped to find what she calls her “person”. Sometimes, despite all intention of making it to the other side of the room, a piano just gets stuck in the middle.'(Introduction)