Mad Meg

Mad Meg

Sally Morrison

Language: English

Pages: 448

ISBN: B014SWDRXW

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


In the world of Mad Meg, life is consumed by art. The present is unalterably coloured by the silences, loyalties and betrayals of the past.

Isobel tries to unravel the secrets of her parents: her kind but crazy mother, Stella, and her rogue but dearly loved father, Henri. Her campaigning sister, Allegra, struggles with the realities of the passing of time as she is drawn into a maelstrom of protestation and parenthood.

Sally Morrison’s classic, award-winning novel draws the reader through a tangle of intersecting lives set against a tapestry of twentieth-century European politics.

Mad Meg explores the gaps between choices and compulsions, artists and phonies, and kinship and friendship.

‘… a big handsome book – a splendid essay on “the mess”!’

David Marr on ABC Radio

‘… a large, ambitious novel … colourful and memorable … an impressive work of fiction.’ Andrew Riemer in The Age

‘… her touch is deft and imaginative.’ Joanna Murray-Smith in The Weekend Australian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

year, it became apparent to Miles, his stepfather would take him to the field opposite the family house and torture him with tackles and drop kicks. When Miles tried to intervene in this process of degradation, he found that David himself was stubborn and the charade would go on until the boy was thoroughly disgraced and the stepfather’s cruelty was triumphant. In time, David had become obsessed with physical activities and sport. Almost every moment of his waking day was spent vicariously

out on doors. She slammed, she banged, she battered with her fists in frustration. He could hear her twelve thousand miles away in England. ‘What’s that noise?’ he asked, though he knew full well what it was, having heard it before. ‘I think there’s something wrong with the line.’ Perhaps he was enjoying himself. We suspected he was, both of us grabbing at our stomachs as though we’d been kicked. Our faces reddened, our heads sang, we could no longer hear what he was saying. We had lost his

a dancer from the Alvin Aley Company of New York performed for her delectation. We suspected that Checkie Laurington, being made of a different metal, didn’t feel as we did. We were curious to know, all the same. We pried at edges and lifted lids and found out from those people who attend life’s dramas that, in her mother’s absence, Checkie was being groomed to run Siècle. Remote and unassailable as a character in a novel, she was being inducted into a social rite from which we, two

Genoa cut velvet couch in the studio. Between ten past four and five twenty-nine in the afternoons, it was deliciously warmed by the sun through the window on the neighbours’ side. When the apple-green blind was drawn the people upon the couch could not be seen. Thursday afternoons were all the more delicious for being ‘illicit’, though there were those who knew about it. Stella was jealous. As long as she was a party to what was going on it was all right with her, but the affair between Arnie

plate rimmed wis little snakes. ‘Milan ’ad quite a different feel from Paris. Zat castle was part of a wall surrounding ze old city. It was ze place where people went to shelter when ze city was under attack. And it was attacked many times, going right back to ze Goths. ‘At ze ’ub of ze old city is ze Square of ze Duomo, and ze Duomo is a very wonderful building, I can tell you. Your grandmuzzer took us zere. When I first saw it, I zought it was a building wis a ballroom inside, because it was

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