Foxybaby (Contemporary American Fiction) - Softcover

Jolley, Elizabeth

3.27

71 ratings by Goodreads

9780140083804: Foxybaby (Contemporary American Fiction)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140083804 ISBN 13: 9780140083804

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1986

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Alma Porch, a spinster and aspiring writer, agrees to teach a course during a summer session at a remote school in Australia

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About the Author:

Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007) is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers, with a formidable international reputation, and during the 1980s and 1990s was widely acclaimed with a wide readership in the U. S. Born in England in 1923, she was brought up in a strict, German-speaking household and attended a Quaker boarding school. She became a nurse, married, and with three children moved to Western Australia in 1959. Although she wrote all her life, it was not until she was in her fifties that her books started to receive the recognition they deserved. Her work won every major award in Australia, and was several times selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Excerpts from her novels (including Cabin Fever, Book 2 in the Trilogy) were published in The New Yorker. Her novels include The Sugar Mother, Foxybaby, Miss Peabody's Inheritance, and Mr. Scobie's Riddle. Elizabeth Jolley died in 2007.

Review:

“A literary romp...merges fiction and fact in a campy style...Alma Porch is a well-drawn and endearing guide.”
- Washington Post

“Hilarious, wry, disturbing, and optimistic.”
- Boston Globe

“A witty, sophisticated novel.”
- Library Journal

“Reminiscent of Shirley Jackson....This darkly comic tale will appeal to those who love novels of eccentricity and the many foibles of human nature.”
- MostlyFiction Book Reviews

“Not just a delicious caper. . . .[It glows] in the mind because . . . informed by Jolley’s understanding of our common loneliness and her sympathy with the myriad, ingenious connections we try to make to alleviate it.”
- Roberta Silman, The Arts Fuse

“The work of Elizabeth Jolley is a reminder of the glorious contradictions of literature: it's a specific chronicle and a universal exploration, endlessly experimental and easy to read, heartbreaking and hilarious and wise and naive. It's like life, and reading Jolley makes one feel alive.”
- Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket)

“Hilarious and bawdy.”
- Robert Coover

“Delicious . . . a novel of pungent charm.”
- Angela Carter

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