Dustjacket synopsis:
"The Newspaper of Claremont Street is the story of an old cleaning woman, known as Weekly, or "The Newspaper'. Unknown to the residents of Claremont Street, for whom she works, Weekly dreams of escape - escape from the parasitic demands of both her past and her present. She dreams of owning a small farm beyond the city.

"Weekly is one of Elizabeth Jolley's major creations; one of the wiry survivors whose vulnerability is Jolley's special task of illumination. This character is perhaps the author's outstanding achievement to date, and is created with humour, sharpness, not a little sympathy, and finally, a sort of desperate calm."

Quotes:
"Elizabeth Jolley, like Virginia Woolf, is a writer rich in ambiguities as she is aware of the anguish of sensibility...Elizabeth Jolley is a major figure in recent Australian writing" - Thomas Shapcott, Westerley
"Her writing is splendid, her characters various, her humour delicious...one of the best writers of fiction in this country" Nancy Keesing, Australian Book Review
"Elizabeth Jolley joins the handful of Australian writers...of whom it may be said that their books are able to alter the direction of one's inner life" - Elizabeth Ward, Washington Post

First Paragraph:

No one knew or cared where the newspaper of Claremont Street went in her spare time.

newspaper, or Weekly, as she was called by those who knew her, earne dher living by cleaning other people's huses. Every day she was in some-one else's place cleaning. While she worked she sang,

'...the bells of hell go ting a ling a ling for you and not for me...'

'Well, and 'ow are we?', she called out, arriving with great noise, filling untidy kitchens with her presence, one kitchen after another, for she worked steadily all day, every day, one house after another.

From the Fremantle Arts Centre Press paperback edition, 1992.

This page and its contents are copyright © 1999-2001 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: March 25, 2001.