Cabin Fever Elizabeth Jolley 1990

Dustjacket synopsis:
"Vera has cabin fever. Confined with her thoughts in the concrete tower of a New York hotel, she is haunted by her mother's reminders of what she should have been, and the desparate choices she faced as an unprotected single mother.

"Elizabeth Jolley writes lucidly of betrayal and survival, loneliness and desire, and with compassion for the sad dislocation of love between parents and children. In Cabin Fever she again beguiles with her particular blend of humour and the serious, and a splendid array of characters."

Quotes:
"...a brilliant and entirely individual writer" - Penelope Fitzgerald, Evening Standard
"A conjurer of luminous memories" - Peter Craven, Age
"Elizabeth Jolley is a fossicker of foibles, a garnerer of moments and mannerisms. She is not the watcher on the cast-iron balcony, more the spy in the kitchen, the observer in the verandah shadows." - Duncan Graham, Sydney Morning Herald

First Paragraph

'I should never have given you that book about Elisabeth Ney.'
'Whyever...She was a sculptor and an artist...She...'
'She had a baby in that book without being married.'
'Oh! Really!'
'It must have given you ideas...'
'Don't, do not be so utterly stupid. How can you be so stupid!'
'Keep your voice down. You don't want the others to hear you talking to your mother like that.'

From the Penguin paperback edition, 1991.

Notes:
This novel was shortlisted for the National Book Council's Banjo Award in 1991.

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Last modified: January 12, 2002.