AustLit

'Is it possible to give one’s life over totally to an artistic vocation? Are love and life competing allures or are they the necessary fuel fanning the flame, as Mervyn Peake’s epigraph, which signposts this book’s theme and title, seems to suggest?' (Introduction)

'When times were difficult, Cynthia Reed Nolan ‘drew the veil’. Born in Evandale in 1908, the youngest of six children, Cynthia always sought distance. From an early age, like siblings Margaret and John, she longed to escape from Tasmania. Oddly, however, this was not what John Reed expected of her. Such anomalies make this biography, which foregrounds her life before she became Cynthia Nolan, particularly interesting. Drawing on newly available correspondence, it portrays a sensitive, ironic woman previously overshadowed by more famous contemporaries.'

(Introduction)

This emotion-charged collection of short stories presents some of the pressures and difficulties teenagers face today while growing up in the globalised nineties. Never before has the rate of growth bypasses traditional development faster than today, often leaving young people stranded, torn, and sometimes scarred for life. There is no point in pretending that these sometimes fatal situations aren't really happening. The only way to deal with such difficulties is to encourage people to start talking openly about the issues involved and face the multitude of challenges in everyday life. (Source: back cover)