One Life: My Mother's Story
by Grenville, Kate
- Used
- Hardcover
- Condition
- See description
- Seller
-
Kings Cross, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Text Publishing, Melbourne 2015. 21.5 x 14.0cms, 260pp, very good hardback & dustwrapper Nance Russell ran successful businesses as a registered pharmacist, helped build the family home and uncovered her husband's life as a revolutionary.
Reviews
On May 12 2015, CloggieDownunder said:
“It was different for Nance. She wasn’t dependent on a man. In fact, she thought that might be part of the problem. She’d been running her own life for so long, she was used to shaping things as she wanted…….She was like those girls who learned to dance with other girls, taking turns to be the man. They never got the hang of following, once they knew what it was like to lead.”
One Life is a biography of Nance Isobel Gee, written by her daughter, popular Australian author, Kate Grenville. Nance was born in 1912. Against the odds for a woman of her humble background, Nance attended Sydney University, became a registered pharmacist and owned her own pharmacy. But this simplistic summation of her life is completely inadequate, for Nance did much, much more with her life. As Grenville relates the incidents and events that punctuated Nance’s life, she takes the reader back to another era, one on the cusp of major change. Schooling, work, war, sexual discrimination, motherhood, political affiliations and even building a house feature in this interesting and entertaining memoir: “Why shouldn’t a woman lay bricks? The world would never change if someone wasn’t prepared to be the first.”
While this may be a memoir, Grenville still manages to treat the reader to some wonderfully evocative prose: “They woke to a day so hot and still the air was like something solid. All morning a cloud gathered on the horizon and by afternoon it filled the sky, dark with a dangerous green underbelly like a bruise. Then one great blast of wind, and the hail starting all at once, like someone spilling peas out of a colander” is just one example. Many of the images on the twenty-four pages of photographs will strike a chord with readers of a certain vintage, who may well have similar photographs of their own family.
Grenville explains: “Her story is unusual in some ways, but in other ways it’s the archetypal twentieth-century story of the coming of a new world of choices and self-determination” Those who knew her have described Nance Gee as a remarkable woman: this is a description which Grenville’s biography proves is certainly very apt. Once again, Grenville treats her readers to a brilliant read.
(Log in or Create an Account first!)
Details
- Bookseller
- THE CROSS Art + Books (AU)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 192087
- Title
- One Life: My Mother's Story
- Author
- Grenville, Kate
- Book Condition
- Used
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- Text Publishing, Melbourne 2015
Terms of Sale
THE CROSS Art + Books
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
THE CROSS Art + Books
Biblio member since 2023
Kings Cross, Sydney, New South Wales
About THE CROSS Art + Books
THE CROSS ART + BOOKS
We stock books about art, design, fashion and history, with a lot of books about Asian, Australian and Pacific arts, crafts, design and cultural history. We have books on women artists, academic analyses and dissident life as well as monographs on Old Masters and avant-garde artists.
Our shop is in Sydney's legendary Kings Cross, which provided alternatives to Australia's normalities and suburbia for 80 years. Colloquially known as The Cross, this name signifies Antipodean bohemia, street gangs and a famous red light district.
We buy quality books on the visual arts, architecture & design. We do not sell any children's books, cooking books, novels or self-help books. Five minutes walk from Kings Cross station, we are open between 10 – 6, every day of the week.
We stock books about art, design, fashion and history, with a lot of books about Asian, Australian and Pacific arts, crafts, design and cultural history. We have books on women artists, academic analyses and dissident life as well as monographs on Old Masters and avant-garde artists.
Our shop is in Sydney's legendary Kings Cross, which provided alternatives to Australia's normalities and suburbia for 80 years. Colloquially known as The Cross, this name signifies Antipodean bohemia, street gangs and a famous red light district.
We buy quality books on the visual arts, architecture & design. We do not sell any children's books, cooking books, novels or self-help books. Five minutes walk from Kings Cross station, we are open between 10 – 6, every day of the week.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Dustwrapper
- Also known as book jacket, dust cover, or dust wrapper, a dust jacket is a protective and decorative cover for a book that is...