I For Isobel - Softcover

Witting, Amy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140126244 ISBN 13: 9780140126242

Publisher: Penguin, 1989

Synopsis

Born into a world without welcome, Isobel observes it as warily as an alien beamed onto another planet. She amasses a collection of imaginary friends including the Virgin Mary and Sherlock Holmes, Byron, W.H. Auden and T.S. Eliot. However, she is not quite as comfortable with the flesh-and-blood people she meets, and least of all with herself, as she attempts to come to terms with a life she doesn't understand. However, a chance encounter and a little detective work reveal her true identity and her true position in life.

About this title

About the Author

AMY WITTING was the pen name of Joan Austral Fraser, born on 26 January 1918 in Sydney, Australia. After attending Fort Street Girls' High School she studied arts at the University of Sydney.
She married Les Levick in 1948 and they had a son. Witting spent her working life teaching, but began writing seriously while recovering from tuberculosis in the 1950s.
Two stories appeared in the NEW YORKER in the mid-1960s, leading to THE VISIT (1977), an acclaimed novel about small-town life in New South Wales. Two years later Witting completed her masterpiece, I FOR ISOBEL, which was rejected by publishers troubled by its depiction of a mother tormenting her child.
When I FOR ISOBEL was eventually published, in 1989, it became a bestseller. Witting was lauded for the power and acuity of her portrait of the artist as a young woman. In 1993 she won the Patrick White Award.
Witting published prolifically in her final decade. After two more novels, her COLLECTED POEMS appeared in 1998 and her collected stories, FACES AND VOICES, in 2000.
Between these volumes came ISOBEL ON THE WAY TO THE CORNER SHOP, the sequel to I FOR ISOBEL. Both ISOBEL novels were shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award; the latter was the 2000 Age Book of the Year.
Amy Witting died in 2001, weeks before her last novel was published and while she was in the early stages of writing the third ISOBEL novel. She was made a Member of the Order of Australia.

CHARLOTTE WOOD has been described by the Age newspaper as 'one of the most intelligent and compassionate novelists in Australia'. ANIMAL PEOPLE, her latest novel, was shortlisted for the Christina Stead Prize and won the People's Choice in the 2013 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. She edits The Writer's Room Interviews magazine and is working on her fifth novel.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140126244
• ISBN 13: 9780140126242
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176