Eleven Letters to You

‘A quietly ecstatic work of memory—intense, witty and beautiful.’ * Helen Garner * ‘A rare feat of imagination and memory, written with grace and humour, irony and controlled anger, summoning the encounters that gave Helen Elliott treasures of human knowledge and surprises of self-awareness.’ * Brenda Niall * ‘A deeply evocative memoir, with the humanity of A. B. Facey’s classic, A Fortunate Life, written on the little piece of ivory favoured by Jane Austen.’ * Louise Adler * ‘A wise, erudite and charming book, steeped in love.’ * Travel Insider * ‘I read it in one sitting—I could not put it down. [It’s] warm and generous…both moving and very thoughtful. It made me think about life stories and how we tell them…Very powerful.’ * Kate Evans, RN Breakfast * ‘A rather unusual and special memoir by one of Australia’s finest literary critics…A lovely reminder that we do not ever get anywhere, or learn anything entirely on our own…Bravo, Helen.’ * Australian * ‘An intelligent, critical, utterly engaging exploration of a life; a memoir that is willing to look at pain and regret as well as joy.’ * Kate Evans, ABC Arts * ‘Here we have a memoir that could be a marvellous epistolary novel. Elliott’s Eleven Letters to You teeters over the boundaries of novel and memoir again and again….It’s tempting to keep quoting from Eleven Letters because the writing is so unusually good. The vividness, the sheer liveliness is a feast that makes you want to keep going back and tasting it again. More than that, it is a vibrant and critical history of the past 70 years...I wouldn’t be surprised if it won awards.’ * Age * ‘Endearing, emotional and often epiphanous…With crackling prose and a vividness that illuminates even the remotest of memories, this memoir pays tribute to those forgotten figures who light the runway into adulthood.’ * Saturday Paper *