A Charm of Powerful Trouble

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

My mother Emma, when she was a girl, dreamed of love, and she got it. She got the days and nights of bliss and the heady fragrance-filled summers, and two more daughters.

Emma dreamed of love, and she got it. And, finally she got the moments of sick despair when she went out into the garden at night and rubbed leaves and dirt into her face and hair. She stood in the dark street and watched night after night the house where we stayed with Claudio and Stella while she was left alone.

I was thirteen. My life, which I'd feared would be ordinary, had proved to be full of wonders, and I expected that more would come to me in the future.

I'd witnessed a bat draw its last breath. I'd seen my sister, in the moonlight, lift up her voice in song. A red butterfly had blossomed from my own body. I had ridden as fast as the wind.

I had drawn blood with my first kiss.

In this sensuous, evocative novel, Joanne Horniman meditates on the forces between sisters, between parent and child, between lovers. She captures and releases the richness of each successive moment in layers of circling stories and vivid images, on themes of love, guilt, secrets and the mystery of growing up and growing older.

Reviews

'A coming-of-age novel with a difference. Not to be missed.' Jo Goodman, Magpies17, November 2002a vivid sense of time and place pervades this rich, sensuous novel as it evokes the multi-layered stories of three generations of women' CBC Notable Australian Books, 2003an unusual and intriguing story for older readers' Reading TimeHorniman's use of the sensual and vivid imagery of life in a small town is captivating' Viewpoint

Author Bio

Joanne Horniman has spent most of her life in country New South Wales, apart from a few years in Sydney and some time travelling overseas. She has worked as an editor, teacher and artist - some of the posters she helped produce are in the print collection of the Australian National Gallery. She has written many books for children and teenagers, including Secret Scribbled Notebooks (A+U 2004), winner of the 2005 Qld Premier's Literary Award and shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's and CBCA Awards. A Charm of Powerful Trouble (A+U 2002) was shortlisted for three Premier's Literary awards, and Mahalia (A+U 2001) was a CBC Honour book, and also shortlisted for numerous awards. Her next book with Allen + Unwin, to be published in 2008, will be a companion volume to Secret Scribbled Notebooks.