Tirra Lirra by the River

Paperback, 144 pages

Published 1977

Melville House (2015)

Callil-Toibin 200 Best Novels (1950-1999)

Afterword by: Anna Funder (2014)

One of Australia’s most celebrated novels: one woman’s journey from Australia to London

Nora Porteous, a witty, ambitious woman from Brisbane, returns to her childhood home at age seventy. Her life has taken her from a failed marriage in Sydney to freedom in London; she forged a modest career as a seamstress and lived with two dear friends through the happiest years of her adult life.

At home, the neighborhood children she remembers have grown into compassionate adults. They help to nurse her back from pneumonia, and slowly let her in on the dark secrets of the neighborhood in the years that have lapsed.

With grace and humor, Nora recounts her desire to escape, the way her marriage went wrong, the vanity that drove her to get a facelift, and one romantic sea voyage that has kept her afloat during her dark years. Her memory is imperfect, but the strength and resilience she shows over the years is nothing short of extraordinary. A book about the sweetness of escape, and the mix of pain and acceptance that comes with returning home.

“Finely honed structurally and tightly textured, it’s a wry, romantic story that should make Anderson’s American reputation and create a demand for her other work.” —***The Washington Post

“There may be a better novel than Tirra Lirra by the River this year, but I doubt it.” —***Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Subtle, rich, and seductive, this beautifully written novels casts a spell of delight upon the reader.” —Library Journal

About the Author

JESSICA ANDERSON (1916–2010) was an accomplished novelist and playwright from Queensland, Australia. She was a writer in residence at the University of New England, Armidale; a Senior Commonwealth Fellow; and two-time award winner of the Miles Franklin Award for literature (for Tirra Lirra By the River and The Impersonators). Though she did not have the means to devote herself to writing until she was forty, she wrote six novels, ten radio plays, and one short story collection before her death in 2010.

ANNA FUNDER is the author of Stasiland and All That I Am.