Second Half First

Richly textured, combining memoir with literary criticism, in Second Half First Drusilla Modjeska looks back on the experiences of the past 30 years which have shaped her writing, her reading, and the way she has lived. From a childhood in England, growing up with a father she admired deeply but felt she never really knew, to her time as a young newlywed, living with her husband in Papua New Guinea; arriving as a single woman in Sydney in the 1970s and building close friendships with writers such as Helen Garner, with whom she lived in the bookish "house on the corner," and the lovers who would—sometimes briefly—derail her, this new book by Drusilla Modjeska is an intensely personal and moving account of a truly examined life. In asking the candid questions that many women face: about love, marriage, the death of parents, growing older, the bonds of friendship and family, Drusilla Modjeska reassesses parts of her life, her work, her reading, the importance to her of writers such as Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir, among many others, to give us a memoir that is at once intellectually provocative and deeply personal, and the book that her readers have been waiting for.

Drusilla Modjeska is one of Australia's most acclaimed writers. Her books include NSW Premier's Award and Australian Bookseller's Book of the Year Award-winner The Orchard; Stravinsky's Lunch; and her first novel, The Mountain, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Miles Franklin Award, the Western Australia Premier's Award and the Barbara Jefferis Award.