Stories From the Warm Zone Jessica Anderson 1987

Dustjacket synopsis:
"Jessica Anderson's evocative stories recreate, through the eyes of a child, the atmosphere of Australia between the wars. A stammer becomes a blessing in disguise; the prospect of a middle name converts a reluctant child to baptism. These autobiographical stories of a Brisbane childhood glow with the warmth of memory.

"The formless sprawl of Sydney in the 1980s is a very different world. Here the lives of other characters are changed by the uncertainties of divorce, chance meetings and the disintegration and generation of relationships."

Quotes:

"The uneasiness, the devastation and the loneliness depicted in the second half of the book is made the more haunting by the warmth of the childhood pictures presented in the first half." - Judges' report, Age Book of the Year

Contents:

From the Author's Note:

The first section of this collection is autobiographical ficton. Though I have bene true to the charcaters of my immediate family, and to our circumstances and surroundings, few of the events described occurred as written, but are memories fed by imagination and shaped by the demands of the narrative form. As a reflection of this fictonal content, and to put myself at a necessary distance whiel writing, I changed the names of the characters and of various streets and places.

From the Penguin paperback edition, 1987.

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Last modified: December 24, 2001.