Fiction

My first novel, Geography was published in 2004. You can buy the a ebook of it here.

My second novel, Bird, came out with Text in July 2008. It is the story of Anna, a child who survives the Siege of Leningrad in WW2 then escapes to America. Anna lives as a singer and actress in Los Angeles and Paris in the Fifites before going to India in the Sixties. There she meets two Tibetan lamas in Darjeeling she is finally able to reclaim her life from the horrors that have haunted her. But in choosing to live as a Buddhist nun, she abandons her daughter, Az. I have also begun to research third novel, This Devastating Fever which is based on several years of the life of Leonard Woolf (1904-1915). They were the years he was in Ceylon and, on his return, began his courtship with, and marriage to, Virginia Stephens. An extract from it was included in Best Australian Stories 2007, edited by Robert Drewe.

Read Excerpts of my writing

Extract from 'This Devastating Fever'

Virginia leant forward as a child might. She sipped. Her mouth was full of the thick stuff. She gagged then swallowed. Her mouth opened again. Her husband put his spoon to it. The operation became mechanical. It continued, this war...

Extract from 'Bird'

The day Anna began her haunting of me was a Thursday. August 14, 2003. Eleanor rang first thing, 'Just to say hello. Is it hot in New York today?' And yes, it was. The temperature was heading for the mid-Nineties....

Extract from 'Geography'

I am trapped in a bad play, a bad romance novel, the lines are not convincing even to me, who wants desperately to be convinced. I drop Michael off where he is staying and he gets out of the car. He hesitates, stands by the car, drums his fingers on the roof, then leans back in and kisses me all over my face, on the mouth. I think he will leave it at that but he doesn't, begins to bite my lips hard, my neck.

Nice Words

Geography is a new map of the heart from an author equipped with the latest global positioning system.
- The Australian

Catherine may think her madness uninteresting, or its reasons insignificant, her journey to and through it is fascinating and we willingly descend in to the darkness with her. But darkness is not all that this novel encompasses. While her relationship with her parents is strained at best, her brother, Finn, is straightforward and steadfast, as is her network of friends. Even if Catherine herself cannot see it, the extent of their compassion shows that she is more than just Michael, that the tenderness and often tough love they feel for her comes solely because of herself. And there is nothing tedious nor unremarkable about that.
- Antipodes

Catherine, like the women in Sex and the City, will use the C-word for what it means, not as a term of abuse. She is refreshingly right to do this, even if it comes as a surprise after four pages of language of high literary pitch.
- The Age

To mix the tristesse of a woman of experience with new-age innocence is a risky undertaking. To throw in lesbian romance as well will be seen by some as an act of folly and by others as a stroke of publishing genius. This is about as good as both genres get.
- The Bulletin