Book Description

A new edition of Beverley Farmer’s classic 1980 debut, out of print for many years. Alone captures the emergence of one of Australia’s most powerful and distinctive writers. Set in Melbourne in the late 1950s, and taking place over the course of two days and nights, Alone chronicles the feelings of obsession and hopelessness, isolation and desire provoked by the ending of an intimate relationship. A young woman, a fledgling writer, recalls her passion for her female lover, who has left her. She is estranged from her family and has dropped out of university, and is contemplating ending her life. As she travels through the night-time streets, industrial areas and boarding houses of a Melbourne fallen into economic depression and cultural malaise, she reflects on the days and months past that have brought her to despair. Written in a style threaded with gothic motifs, and shadowed by the constant threat of sexual violence, Beverley Farmer’s debut novel captures the romantic intensity and ironic reversals of youthful longing. It displays her remarkable capacity for bringing different forms of writing together in a single work, prose and poetry, dialogue and dramatic monologue, as well as her reflections on other writers’ work. Based partly on her own experiences, Alone shows the formation of a literary voice in writing that is both heightened and flowing, lyrical and precise. Praise for Beverley Farmer: ‘As she explores the frailty of emotional experience, Farmer places her characters in a luminous domain of elemental sensual experience…’ — Cassandra Pybus ‘Beverley Farmer’s expansive curiosity and regard for microcosmic significance sharpen a reader’s attention to all things lived, dreamed, and observed.’ — Josephine Rowe