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Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop

Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop

by Amy Witting

Introduction by Maria Takolander

Published by: Text Publishing Company

Imprint: Text Classics

336 Pages, 5.00 x 7.75 in

Paperback
9781922182715
Published: November 2015

$14.95

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Praise

Quietly brilliantWitting's characterizations are staggeringly sharpit is hard to imagine a novel more keenly observedsimultaneously heartbreaking and (subtly) hilarious, not because they're exaggerated, but because they are so unsettlingly, overwhelmingly trueA compassionate masterpiece.’Kirkus (starred review)

Isobel Callaghan is struggling to survive as a writer. She is isolated, poor and hungry. Leaving her boarding house in search of food, she has a breakdown on the way to the corner shop. Waking in the hospital, Isobel learns that she will be confined to a sanatorium. There, among the motley patients, and with the aid of great works of literature, she confronts the horrors of her past. But can she find a way to face the future? Confronting and compassionate, profound and funny, the second Isobel novel confirmed Amy Witting as one of the finest Australian writers of her time.

Amy Witting was born in Sydney in 1918. Beginning late in life she published six novels, including I for Isobel (1989), Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop (2000) and A Change in the Lighting (1994); two collections of short stories and several volumes of verse. She had numerous poems and short stories published in magazines such as The New Yorker. Witting was awarded the 1993 Patrick White Prize. Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop won the Age Book of the Year Award. The author died in 2001.

‘Quietly brilliant…Witting's characterizations are staggeringly sharp—it is hard to imagine a novel more keenly observed—simultaneously heartbreaking and (subtly) hilarious, not because they're exaggerated, but because they are so unsettlingly, overwhelmingly true…A compassionate masterpiece.’—Kirkus (starred review)

Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop

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