Shielded from emotional and physical abuse by layers of fat, Lilian struggles to escape a suffocating existence in the home of her tyrannical Victorian father and her elegant but ineffectual mother. Madness, cruelty and sexuality permeate the family's upper-crust Australian world.

Lilian Una Singer starts life at the beginning of the twentieth century as the daughter of a prosperous middle-class Australian family. She ends it as a cheerfully eccentric bag-lady living on the streets, quoting Shakespeare. This book traces the progress of her life's journey, and why she made the choices she did. She's a person large in spirit as well as body, who wants to invent her own story, rather than allow it to be invented for her.

Life presents her with many obstacles including the sinister advances of her father - but in spite of this she succeeds. Triumphantly, she makes her life her own, savouring every moment with the reminder that 'everything matters'.
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Lilian’s Story is Kate Grenville’s first published novel (1986) - it is part of a loose trilogy that includes Dark Places (1994) and Joan Makes History (1988).

About the Author

Kate Grenville was born in Sydney, Australia. Her novel The Idea of Perfection won the Orange Prize and became a long-running best-seller. Her other works of fiction have been published to acclaim in Australia and overseas and have won state and national awards. Most recently, The Secret River, also published by Canongate, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (2006). Kate lives in Sydney with her family.

ordered online and sent directly as a wishlist title for oppem's Birthday RABCK Group 2022

happy belated birthday

happy reading

;)

happy reading

;)

Looks fascinating! thank you!

Girl, young lady, woman, Lilian is kind, sensitive and intelligent, mocked because she is fat and unfortunately encumbered with an abusive father. I found her story very moving, and a lesson in tolerance. I will look at our local bag ladies through different eyes.
The book is beautifully written with descriptions that often made me smile, such as:
"Joan's father smiled like a smiling egg and finally sat down opposite me. His skull was good enough to toss from hand to hand. The ears were the only decorations on his head, and like tastefully concealed machinery his eyes moved smoothly in their sockets."

This has been read by me and a friend and is now left in the free library for someone else to enjoy.