Blain - The museum of words: a memoir of language, writing, and mortality

Contents

Praise for Georgia Blain

Blain is a writer of such lucidity and strength that her characters speak, undeniably, for themselves What makes it possible to contain tragedy in words, so that the reader enters into the experience and passes through it, cleansed? The Greek playwrights had their own answers to this question; but the question, I suspect, is far older than their version of it. Each generation of authors must find the right words for writing about death.

DOROTHY JOHNSTON , Sydney Morning Herald

Picking a favourite Georgia Blain novel is like picking a favourite child Blain intelligently asks the big questions about mortality, grief, forgiveness and how hard it can sometimes be to love those were supposed to.

North and South

Blain writes enchantingly about the interstices of life, the places where morality and meaningfulness blur, and characters try to justify their actions or deal with their emotions lyrical and lucid.

Herald Sun

Whenever I need reminding of the preciousness of ordinary life I return to this stunning novel of forgiveness and family, which gives clear, beautiful voice to the fierce luck of being alive.

CHARLOTTE WOOD

My favourite work of fiction in this year was Georgia Blains lush and loss-ridden Between a Wolf and a Dog . Its a novel about the ways in which we hurt each other, or are hurt by the world, yet it is hopeful and redemptive in the small moments and minute joys that it charts.

FIONA WRIGHT

Many adjectives have been used to describe Georgia Blains work, including evocative, powerful, atmospheric, haunting, rich, thought-provoking, skilful, uncompromising and finely detailed all of which apply to this collection of short stories.

Books+Publishing

Theres a quiet, understated quality to her prose, an introspection in her narrative that makes her words glow dully with slow-burning intensity Relationships in all their combinations and permutations are skilfully dissected by an author with a keen eye and a firm grasp.

THUY ON , The Sun-Herald & The Age

Blains achievement with the short story form is to render it a mid point between the overt artifice of fiction and the covert artifice of life-writing her stories fill up with ambiguity characterised by an irresolution that mimics the resistance of experience to shape and comprehension.

STELLA CLARKE , The Weekend Australian

Told with subtlety, tenderness and, skill, The Secret Lives of Men displays Georgia Blains superb ability to convey both the joys and struggles of daily life and its impact on each of us. Blain is a gifted writer: through her storytelling we come to know ourselves better.

TONY BIRCH

[An] elegant, intelligent and affecting novel from a writer at the height of her powers.

The Saturday Paper

Heartfelt, wise, and emotionally intelligent, Between a Wolf and a Dog is a beautifully tender exploration of the complications of family love, self-knowledge, and the struggle for forgiveness.

GAIL JONES , author of A Guide to Berlin

Acute and finely detailed [Blains] refusal to disentangle and simplify is one of the strengths of this quiet, beautifully written and resonant memoir.

BRENDA NIALL , Sydney Morning Herald

An astute and intelligent observer, her insights make compelling reading. Births Deaths Marriages is a superbly crafted, richly layered, collection of beautifully written stories, one that readers are bound to return to again and again.

Readings Monthly

THE MUSEUM OF WORDS

Georgia Blain published novels for adults and young adults, essays, short stories, and a memoir. Her first novel was the bestselling Closed for Winter , which was made into a feature film. Her books have been shortlisted for numerous awards including the NSW, Victorian, and SA Premiers Literary Awards, the ALS Gold Medal, the Stella Prize, and the Nita B. Kibble Award for her memoir Births Deaths Marriages. Georgias works include The Secret Lives of Men , Too Close to Home , and the YA novel Darkwater . In 2016, Georgia published Between a Wolf and a Dog and the YA novel Special (Penguin Random House Australia). Between a Wolf and a Dog was shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize, and was awarded the 2017 Victorian Premiers Literary Award for Fiction and the 2016 Queensland Literary Award for Fiction. Georgia passed away in December 2016.

Scribe Publications
1820 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia
2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom

First published by Scribe 2017

Copyright Georgia Blain 2017

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Image placement Andrew G Taylor
All photographs and images copyright Andrew G Taylor, unless otherwise stated.
Extract from A Southern Rose reprinted here with permission of Odessa Blain.

9781925322255 (Australian edition)
9781911344544 (UK edition)
9781925548389 (e-book)

CiP records for this title are available from the British Library and the National Library of Australia.

scribepublications.com.au
scribepublications.co.uk

For my mother, Anne, my dear friend Rosie,
and the loves of my life, Andrew and Odessa

Foreword

I notice the date as I start writing, and realise it is only three months to the day since Georgias death. Its not a long time by anyones count. No wonder emotions are still raw.

Georgia was my life-partner, and we lived together for twenty years. She was diagnosed with brain cancer (Stage 4, Glioblastoma Multiforme) in November 2015, and died thirteen months later. Age fifty-one.

Georgia began writing The Museum of Words shortly after her diagnosis, and she finished a near-final draft just before she died. Knowing she was not long for this world, she mentioned the possibility of me writing an introduction, and I suggested we use some images at various places throughout the text. There was a loose consensus on both of these ideas, but that is about as far as we got.

Last night I printed out the manuscript, ready to continue editing today. Tears were rolling down my cheek before I got to the end of the first page. Georgias voice was so fresh and clear the words vibrant and alive spring to mind, but, of course, there is something wrong with this picture.

As tender and painful as it was, once I started reading, I found it addictive. An old friend of mine, Junji, once described melancholy as the feeling of enjoying being sad. I cant say I enjoyed being sad, but I didnt want this feeling to stop.

Nonetheless, I forced myself to put the manuscript aside, determined to try and approach it fresh in the morning. I cleared my desk and other day-to-day work in preparation. I wanted a clear head, too. No drinking. (Well, only two glasses.)

I was woken by a dream, and then by a 4am-busy mind. Ideas for this introduction pinging and ricocheting around. In the dream, Georgia and I were sleeping outside, and, when it became light enough, I realised we were lying under trees full of blossom. Not just any blossom cherry blossom. Below, a Japanese family were having a picnic breakfast in the park. I waved good morning, and a Japanese woman waved good morning back. Actually, I sang out ohay and she sang back the refrain gozaimasu (it made perfect dream sense, but to literally translate, it would be something like I sang out good morning, and she sang back to be wishing you).