CONTENTS

Cover Page

About the Book

Title Page

1 An Introduction

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)

2 Magic Words

Margaret Atwood, Hag-Seed (2016)

3 Living Memory

Baba Schwartz, The May Beetles (2016) & Jacob G. Rosenberg, East of Time (2005)

4 Mostly I Wait

Tim Winton, Eyrie (2013) & Cloudstreet (1991)

5 Honest to God

Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2011)

6 The Bottom of the Pile

Genelle Guzman-McMillan, Angel in the Rubble (2011)

7 Riddikulus

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)

8 Because There Is Pain

Annie Proulx, Close Range (1999)

9 Long Time Shaving

Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (1994)

10 Finding Centre

Thea Astley, Reaching Tin River (1990)

11 The Other Side of the River

Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

12 Large

Les Murray, ‘An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow’ (1969)

13 The Bedside of My Mother

Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death (1964)

14 The Freshness of Good

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)

15 The Whole Story Is the Meaning

Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955)

16 Silent Voice

Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas (1953)

17 Sharp Elbows and a Hacking Cough

Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness (1952)

18 Loss

Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth (1933)

19 Exquisite Moments

Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)

20 Not of Ourselves

Mary Gilmore, The Passionate Heart (1918)

21 The Best of All Impossible Worlds

G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens (1906)

22 A Local Habitation and a Name

Joseph Furphy, Such Is Life (1903)

23 A River Somewhere

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)

24 Love Came So Lightly

John Shaw Neilson, ‘Love’s Coming’ (1896)

25 Unvisited Tombs

George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871)

26 An Old Tree

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869)

27 The Commander of an Army

Isabella Beeton, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861)

28 Ego Dismasted

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

29 Reader, I Married the Wrong One

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)

30 Lonely Creature

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

31 Looks

Jane Austen, Persuasion (1818)

32 This Bed Thy Centre Is

John Donne, ‘The Sunne Rising’ (early seventeenth century)

33 The Ingenious Gentleman

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605)

34 By Spells and Medicines

William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603)

35 Plenty

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (c. 1390)

36 How to Live

Seneca, On the Shortness of Life (c. 55 ce)

37 Monstrous Strange

Herodotus, First paragraph of The Histories (fifth century bce)

38 Souvlaki

Homer, Book 24 of The Iliad (eighth century bce)

39 My Tears Have Become My Bread

A taste of the Torah, the Bible, the Qur’an

40 The Way Home

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (c. sixth century bce)

Epilogue: Words that Don’t Come Easy

A Word of Thanks

Copyright Page