Dustjacket synopsis:
"In this masterly collection of stories, Elizabeth Jolley has created a splendid array of characters, all of whom fail to achieve the expected. Her stories are sometimes slyly comic, sometimes disturbing - but always they are written with a delicacy and compassion as moving as the characters themselves."

Quotes:
Elizabeth Jolley's stories "are about very simple people, but with deep human sensitivity, and their dreams, though hopeless, put haloes around the contours of everyday drabness" - A. R. Chisholm, The Age
"She does better than a great many other authors what women writers at their best do well - examine the small life and reveal both its beauty and its sadness, its wry hopes and ironic defeats" - Newcastle Herald
"The depth of understanding in her short stories is often disturbing. Sometimes the humour, or the celebration, seems almost a desperate counter to despair and the full burden of that understanding..." - Thomas Shapcott, Westerly

Contents:
"Pear Tree Dance"
"Adam's Bride" (formerly titled "The Bench") from Meanjin, 1979
"Hilda's Wedding" from Looselicks, 1976
"Two Men Running" from The Bulletin, 1981
"Uncle Bernard's Proposal" from Landfall, 1973
"Paper Children"
"The Play Reading"from Australian Good Housekeeping, 1981
"The Libation"
"One Christmas Knitting" from Memories of Childhood edited by Lee White, 1978
"Butter Butter Butter for a Boat"
"Woman in a Lampshade" from Westerly, 1979
"Wednesdays and Fridays" from Quadrant, 1981
"Dingle the Fool" from Quadrant, 1972
"The Representative"
"Clever and Pretty"
"The Shed" from New Country edited by Bruce Bennett, 1976
"The Last Crop"

From the King Penguin paperback edition, 1988.

Notes:
The lead story of this collection was dramatised for television by the Australian Broadcasting Commission and featured Ruth Cracknell in the lead role.

This page and its contents are copyright © 1997-2001 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: March 25, 2001.