PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- Even when she's being born, Connie's mother knows her new daughter is going to be a handful. And so it proves, as Connie moves through her world with certainty, self-reliance, mischief, curiosity and a sense that beauty lurks in the most unlikely of places. A child of the Depression, with a father (the local Baptish priest) both stern and loving, and a mother busy with the children and parish work, Connie's life in Ballarat is full of small adventures, spats with local children and questions about everything. It isn't a golden childhood, but this novel conveys the times with great detail and unsentimentality and is a satisfying depiction of rural life and a brave, naïve and vivid young character who never gives in. Lindy
A stunning evocation of Australian life through the war to the 1950s, this novel is intimate and sweeping, immediate and dreamlike - a magical rendering of darkness and joy, and the beauty inherent in difference. For readers of Sarah Winman's Still Life, Trent Dalton's All Our Shimmering Skies and Rosalie Ham's The Dressmaker.
Robbi Neal's first book SUNDAY BEST, a memoir was developed as part of the HarperCollins/Varuna awards program and published by HarperCollins in 2004. AFTER BEFORE TIME, which told stories of indigenous life in a remote community, was published in 2016. THE ART OF PRESERVING LOVE, a story that spanned 25 years from 1905 to 1930 was published in 2018 under the pen name Ada Langton. Robbi also paints and is currently working towards an exhibition scheduled for 2022 at Redot Fine Art Gallery, Singapore. She is a mama of five wonderful humans (you're welcome world). She has lived in country Victoria, Australia, for most of her life and lives only a few of blocks from where her novel THE SECRET WORLD OF CONNIE STARR (2022) is set. She loves to walk down Dawson Street past the church her grandfather preached in, the same church with the same columns that appear in in this book. When Robbi isn't writing, she is painting, or reading or hanging out with her family and friends, all of whom she adores. She loves procrasti-cooking, especially when thinking about the next chapter in her writing. She also loves cheese, any cheese, all cheese and lemon gin or dirty martinis, the blues, and more cheese. Photo Credit: Indea Leslie
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- Even when she's being born, Connie's mother knows her new daughter is going to be a handful. And so it proves, as Connie moves through her world with certainty, self-reliance, mischief, curiosity and a sense that beauty lurks in the most unlikely of places. A child of the Depression, with a father (the local Baptish priest) both stern and loving, and a mother busy with the children and parish work, Connie's life in Ballarat is full of small adventures, spats with local children and questions about everything. It isn't a golden childhood, but this novel conveys the times with great detail and unsentimentality and is a satisfying depiction of rural life and a brave, naïve and vivid young character who never gives in. Lindy
