Lilian's Story (Harvest Book)

by KateGrenville (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  1986

  $17.39

  Madness, cruelty, and sexuality permeate the household in which Lilian Una Singer is raised-an upper-crust Victorian world of teacups and servants. But Lilian, shielded by layers of fat, an iron will, and an indomitable spirit, has her sights set on an education, love, and-finally-her own transcendent forms of independence.

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.25

• Used

  Hardcover
  1986

  $11.26

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $11.10

  Shielded from emotional and physical abuse by layers of fat, Lilian struggles to escape a suffocating existence in the home of her tyrannical Victorian father and her elegant but ineffectual mother. Madness, cruelty and sexuality permeate the family's upper-crust Australian world. Lilian Una Singer starts life at the beginning of the twentieth century as the daughter of a prosperous middle-class Australian family. She ends it as a cheerfully eccentric bag-lady living on the streets, quoting Shakespeare. This book traces the progress of her life's journey, and why she made the choices she did. She's a person large in spirit as well as body, who wants to invent her own story, rather than allow it to be invented for her. Life presents her with many obstacles including the sinister advances of her father - but in spite of this she succeeds. Triumphantly, she makes her life her own, savouring every moment with the reminder that 'everything matters'.