Unbecoming / Joanne Fedler – Linwood Messina

Information

Author:

Joanne Fedler

Date:

Lusaris, an imprint of Serenity Press (Australia)
October 2020

Category:

1.3 Authors (rep'd by agency) , 2. General Fiction , 4. Women's Fiction

Services Offered

South Africa: Penguin
Germany: Droemer Knaur

Additional Info

UNBECOMING

Rights Holder: Linwood Messina
Original Language: English

"Fedler has that quality that is required to write with bracing authenticity: fearlessness. A refusal to look away, to make nice, to talk nice…Unbecoming is an intimate conversation on the edge of the burning world."
— Karin Schimke, award-winning poet and translator, essayist and editor.

"Joanne Fedler’s wild words always make me see the ordinary with fresh eyes…Her insightful prose burrows deep into the heart of issues we all grapple with. Unbecoming is the book about women, men, friendship, love, lust, death and menopause — and so much else — that you have been waiting for.
— Katerina Cosgrove, author of Bone Ash Sky and Zorba the Buddha

While on her three-month marriage-and-motherhood Sabbatical in the country, Jo bumps into an old friend Fiona who invites her on a ‘sacred silent walk to mark her 57th birthday – the first since her husband Ben died.

The last thing Jo wants is to share anything about herself – these are Fiona’s friends, not hers. And what’s she going to say? That her young adult children have made life choices she doesn’t understand? That she has no idea who she is anymore? That everything is falling apart – even her ‘happy marriage’ to Frank?

But the unexpected intrusion of a young backpacker into their secret location, unleashes powerful and conflicting emotions in each woman, provoking conversations and confidences that stray into the shadowlands of motherhood, the mysteries of midlife, the future of monogamy and mother Earth.

Under the canopy of the open night sky, around a small, tended fire, the women share wise counsel, spill their secrets and offer up their stories, each exposing corners of truth the others need to hear.

Unbecoming is a funny, heartbreaking and provocative homage to the midlife unravelling as women on the brink of elderhood speak honestly about their lives and wonder what the hell to do with vaginas that are not ready to be put out to pasture just yet.

Joanne Fedler is the internationally bestselling author of 12 books, which have been translated into many different languages and have sold over 750 000 copies worldwide. She is a Fulbright scholar, has a Master’s degree in Law from Yale, set up and ran an advocacy centre to end violence against women in South Africa and has spent her life fighting for women’s rights. She was selected as one of the women in 200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See The World (Chronicle Books, 2017).

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