Georgia Blain published novels for adults and young adults, essays, short stories, and a memoir. Her first novel was the bestselling Closed for Winter, which was made into a feature film. Her books have been shortlisted for numerous awards including the NSW, Victorian, and SA Premiers’ Literary Awards, the ALS Gold Medal, the Stella Prize, and the Nita B. Kibble Award for her memoir Births Deaths Marriages. Georgia’s works include The Secret Lives of Men, Too Close to Home, and the YA novel Darkwater. In 2016, Georgia published Between a Wolf and a Dog and the YA novel Special (Penguin Random House Australia). Between a Wolf and a Dog was shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize, and was awarded the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction and the 2016 University of Queensland Fiction Book Award. Georgia passed away in December 2016.
‘[An] elegant, intelligent and affecting novel from a writer at the
height of her powers.’
*The Saturday Paper*
‘Blain just gets better and better. The clarity, warmth and
precision of Between a Wolf and a Dog brings to mind the formal
beauty of an exquisitely cut gemstone. Blain looks at the big
questions — mortality, grief, forgiveness — through the lens of one
family’s everyday struggle to love each other. This portrait of
marriage and work, of sisterhood, mothers, and daughters is
resolute and clear-eyed; so commanding and beautifully written it
made me cry.’
*Charlotte Wood, author of The Natural Way of Things*
‘Heartfelt, wise, and emotionally intelligent, Between a Wolf and a
Dog is a beautifully tender exploration of the complications of
family love, self-knowledge, and the struggle for forgiveness.’
*Gail Jones, author of A Guide to Berlin*
‘What a marvellously clear eye Georgia Blain has for the ways in
which we love and harm one another. Whether she is observing a
“coconut-ice” grevillea or meditating on everyday consolations and
sorrows, Blain is a quietly profound writer and this is a
remarkable book.’
*Michelle De Kretser*
‘Between a Wolf and a Dog is an elegantly told story describing the
ambiguities within human relationships. Each evening, when my
children slept, I would enter the world of this book — coming to
know a flawed, courageous, and creative family of characters, as
they struggled to be good, to be whole, and finally, to let
go.’
*Sofie Laguna, author of The Eye of the Sheep*
‘[A]n elegant novel, written in lucent and, at times, luminous
prose. It is a work of delicately detailed emotion and beautiful
balance, and it is so well paced that its narrative is utterly
compelling. It is a remarkable portrayal of family relationships,
and the complex and often competing desires and sensitivities that
drive them, but it is mostly a book about love and forgiveness, and
holding on to our good fortune and our loved ones, even and
especially in the face of loss. It is heartfelt and resonant, and a
remarkable novel that lingers long after its final page.’
*Weekend Australian*
‘Blain is a writer of such lucidity and strength that her
characters speak, undeniably, for themselves … What make it
possible to contain tragedy in words, so that the reader enters
into the experience and passes through it, cleansed? The Greek
playwrights had their own answers to this question; but the
question, I suspect, is far older than their version of it. Each
generation of authors must find the right words for writing about
death. Part of the reason Between a Wolf and a Dog succeeds so well
is that everything in the novel is heartfelt without being in the
least sentimental.’
*Sydney Morning Herald*
‘Picking a favourite Georgia Blain novel is like picking a
favourite child … Blain intelligently asks the big questions —
about mortality, grief, forgiveness and how hard it can sometimes
be to love those we’re supposed to.’
*North and South*
‘Captures the elusive moment when it's time to forgive, when it's
time to stop fighting.’
*Australian Women's Weekly*
‘Luminous … Blain creates characters so real that they colonise the
mind and become part of the reader’s world well after the end of
the novel; her setting — a single day suffused with rain implacable
as tears — becomes our weather; her children — particularly the
young twins Catherine and Lara — delight with their lively
authenticity.’
*Adelaide Advertiser*
‘Blain writes enchantingly about the interstices of life, the
places where morality and meaningfulness blur, and characters try
to justify their actions or deal with their emotions … lyrical and
lucid.’
*Herald Sun*
‘On a rainy day in Sydney, pivotal moments from each character’s
past are revisited to illuminate the present. Blain’s domestic
detail and her life-affirming pace make this novel substantial and
sincere.’
*Daily Telegraph*
‘In graceful prose, Blain’s characters attempt to celebrate the
important things in life: love, work, sisterhood and marriage; and
struggle as those things unravel … A heartbreaker.’
*Psychologies*
‘Whenever I need reminding of the preciousness of ordinary life I
return to this stunning novel of forgiveness and family, which
gives clear, beautiful voice to the fierce luck of being
alive.’
*The Age ‘Best Books of 2016’*
‘A heartbreaking, beautiful novel.’
*The Age ‘Best Books of 2016’*
‘Like all her novels, Between a Wolf and a Dog explores the often
unarticulated complexities of the intersection of the personal and
the political with exquisite grace and intelligence.’
*Australian Book Review ‘Best Books of 2016’*
‘My favourite work of fiction in this year was Georgia Blain’s lush
and loss-ridden Between a Wolf and a Dog. It’s a novel about the
ways in which we hurt each other, or are hurt by the world, yet it
is hopeful and redemptive in the small moments and minute joys that
it charts.’
*Australian Book Review ‘Best Books of 2016’*
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