One life - Kate Grenville

'Clear, authentic and utterly engaging . . . it is as successful as it is authentic' Independent on Sunday

Born to an unhappy marriage and into a deeply sexist society, Nance Russell worked hard for everything she had, and while the world changed around her, she went on to university, to opening businesses and raising a family. One Life is Nance's story - and many other women's too - beautifully captured by her daughter, the bestselling novelist Kate Grenville. Kate draws on the tales passed down to her to create an evocative portrait of life in twentieth-century rural Australia, and a deeply intimate and caring homage to a mother.

Kate Grenville's bestselling novel The Secret River received the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. The Idea of Perfection won the Orange Prize. Grenville's other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Lilian's Story, Dark Places and Joan Makes History.


www.kategrenville.com

Wonderful
Independent

A work of imaginative sympathy, it is as successful as it is audacious . . . Clear, authentic and utterly engaging . . . A microcosm for the changes taking place on the world stage in the period spanned
Independent on Sunday

Kate Grenville is one of Australia's finest writers . . . her great skill as a writer is to take the barest of biographical details and spin them into something of intricate moral complexity
Telegraph

A compelling read . . . very moving . . . Grenville's feminist instincts, which run quietly through her life and writing, built on her mother's example
Sydney Morning Herald

Grenville inhabits characters with a rare completeness . . . She writes with a poet's sense of rhythm and imagery
Guardian

Grenville has emerged not only as the truth-teller but also something of a hero . . . her novels are important quests that go beyond art
Irish Times

The power with which Kate Grenville evokes places and people is so remarkable
DIANA ATHILL

Kate Grenville has a reputation for elegant prose that cuts to the very heart of her subject matter with breathtaking precision
Vogue

We are given the portrait of a woman whole. I adored her and the way Grenville wrote about her from every angle
Savidge Reads