Elizabeth Jolley 
My Father’s Moon 

With an introduction by J.M. Coetzee ‘The novel at the heart of all her work’ Helen Daniel, The Age Vera is young, awkward and naive. As a schoolgirl, she has her sheltered idealism, her Quaker boarding-school education, and the warm, enveloping sense of security of her parents. As a student nurse during the war, her transition into womanhood is rapid, painful and disastrous. And as an unmarried mother she flees from the nagging tension of her home and the hospital gossip to Fairfields, a place of poetry, music and of people with interesting lives and ideas. Quickly she learns it is otherwise. Yet, for Vera, there is always the moon — her companion, comforter, and the unbreakable link with her father… Full of alarming perceptions, black irony and tenderness, My Father’s Moon is the first book in Jolley’s semi-autobiographical trilogy that also includes Cabin Fever and The George’s Wife. Winner of The Age’s Book of the Year Award