OUR STORE IS CLOSED ON ANZAC DAY: THURSDAY 25 APRIL
Catherine Johns was born in Cessnock, NSW in 1949. She has taught English and French in Melbourne secondary schools, and English in TAFE. She began publishing poems in literary magazines in the '70s. Her short stories have been published in Meanjin and Island Magazine. One of these was short-listed for The Age short story competition. MAGGIE is her first novel. Catherine enjoys books, art, music, and travel. She lives and writes in Melbourne.
As soon as I swam past the first phrase I was in, in a world, past yet present, old yet eternally young, a world I did not want to leave. A story of abuse, yes, a story of betrayal, yes, but above all a work of high literature that was as gripping as it was meaningful. I read till one in the morning. The characters are all sharply defined, the narrative voice powerful, mesmerising. The language is unerringly beautiful and poised, but so natural, you are there - immediately, standing in the garden, in the cities she describes. This is the story of a woman's near annihilation and her recovering the scattered atoms of her life - as if she were finding her way back to a lost garden that was there before everything happened. - Catherine de Saint Phalle, Stella-Prize shortlisted author of Poum and Alexandre
