Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Isobel Callaghan is struggling to make a career as a writer in Sydney. She is isolated, poor and hungry, and fears she's going mad. Leaving her room in a boarding house in search of food, she has a breakdown on the way to the corner shop.
Waking in hospital, Isobel learns that she will be confined to a sanatorium in the Blue Mountains. There, among the motley assortment of patients, and with the aid of great works of literature, she will confront the horrors of her past. But can she find a way to face the future?
Confronting and compassionate, profound and funny, the second Isobel Callaghan novel is every bit as brilliant as its much-loved predecessor. It confirmed Amy Witting as one of the finest Australian writers of her time.
Amy Witting was born in Sydney in 1918. She attended Sydney University, then taught French and English in state schools. Beginning late in life she published six novels, including The Visit, I for Isobel, Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop and Maria's War; two collections of short stories; two books of verse, Travel Diary and Beauty is the Straw; and her Collected Poems. She had numerous poems and short stories published in magazines such as Quadrant and the New Yorker. Her acclaimed short fiction is collected in the volume Faces and Voices. Witting was awarded the 1993 Patrick White Prize. Isobel on the way to the Corner Shop won the Age Book of the Year Award. Amy Witting died in 2001.
'Her reflections on human nature are eloquently drawn, intimate, compassionate and witty.' Australian
Amy Witting is comparable to Jean Rhys, but she has more starch, or vinegar. The effect is bracing.' New Yorker
'[Witting] lays bare with surgical precision the dynamics of families, sibling, students in coffee shops, office coteries. One sometimes feels positively winded with unsettling insights. There is something relentless, almost unnerving in her anatomising of foibles, fears obsessions, private shame, the nature of loneliness, the nature of panic.' Janette Turner Hospital
'A beautifully but unobtrusively honed style, a marvellous ear for dialogue, a generous understanding of the complex waywardness of men and women.' Andrew Riemer
'Sparkling prose and extraordinary ability to enter the minds of a wide variety of characters.' A Reader's Guide to Australian Fiction
'Quietly brilliant...Witting's characterizations are staggeringly sharp—it is hard to imagine a novel more keenly observed—simultaneously heartbreaking and (subtly) hilarious, not because they're exaggerated, but because they are so unsettlingly, overwhelmingly true...A compassionate masterpiece.' STARRED Review, Kirkus
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Amy Witting. (2015). Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop. The Text Publishing Company.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Amy Witting. 2015. Isobel On the Way to the Corner Shop. The Text Publishing Company.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Amy Witting, Isobel On the Way to the Corner Shop. The Text Publishing Company, 2015.
MLA Citation (style guide)Amy Witting. Isobel On the Way to the Corner Shop. The Text Publishing Company, 2015.
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Isobel Callaghan is struggling to make a career as a writer in Sydney. She is isolated, poor and hungry, and fears she's going mad. Leaving her room in a boarding house in search of food, she has a breakdown on the way to the corner shop.
Waking in hospital, Isobel learns that she will be confined to a sanatorium in the Blue Mountains. There, among the motley assortment of patients, and with the aid of great works of literature, she will confront the horrors of her past. But can she find a way to face the future?
Confronting and compassionate, profound and funny, the second Isobel Callaghan novel is every bit as brilliant as its much-loved predecessor. It confirmed Amy Witting as one of the finest Australian writers of her time.
Amy Witting was born in Sydney in 1918. She attended Sydney University, then taught French and English in state schools. Beginning late in life she published six novels, including The Visit, I for Isobel, Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop and Maria's War; two collections of short stories; two books of verse, Travel Diary and Beauty is the Straw; and her Collected Poems. She had numerous poems and short stories published in magazines such as Quadrant and the New Yorker. Her acclaimed short fiction is collected in the volume Faces and Voices. Witting was awarded the 1993 Patrick White Prize. Isobel on the way to the Corner Shop won the Age Book of the Year Award. Amy Witting died in 2001.
'Her reflections on human nature are eloquently drawn, intimate, compassionate and witty.' Australian
Amy Witting is comparable to Jean Rhys, but she has more starch, or vinegar. The effect is bracing.' New Yorker
'[Witting] lays bare with surgical precision the dynamics of families, sibling, students in coffee shops, office coteries. One sometimes feels positively winded with unsettling insights. There is something relentless, almost unnerving in her anatomising of foibles, fears obsessions, private shame, the nature of loneliness, the nature of panic.' Janette Turner Hospital
'A beautifully but unobtrusively honed style, a marvellous ear for dialogue, a generous understanding of the complex waywardness of men and women.' Andrew Riemer
'Sparkling prose and extraordinary ability to enter the minds of a wide variety of characters.' A Reader's Guide to Australian Fiction
'Quietly brilliant...Witting's characterizations are staggeringly sharp—it is hard to imagine a novel more keenly observed—simultaneously heartbreaking and (subtly) hilarious, not because they're exaggerated, but because they are so unsettlingly, overwhelmingly true...A compassionate masterpiece.' STARRED Review, Kirkus
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Starred review from September 1, 2015
Isobel Callaghan, a struggling young writer with a difficult past, collapses on the way to buy provisions at the corner store and soon finds herself-much to her surprise-recovering from tuberculosis in the self-contained society of Mornington Sanatorium. Australian writer Witting's (I is for Isobel, 1989, etc.) quietly brilliant novel was published in her own country in 1999 and is appearing in the U.S. for the first time; it's set in the middle of the 20th century. Anxious, poor, and isolated, Isobel is worried she's losing her mind. She's quit her job (translating German mail at an importers) in a rage and, buoyed by the encouragement of a highbrow editor, has taken an attic room in a Sydney boardinghouse to write fiction. Now, overridden by social anxiety and rapidly running out of money, Isobel has begun to deteriorate in a way she doesn't understand. Upon collapsing in the street, she's taken to a local hospital; her madness, it seems, is better known as tuberculosis. "How could she explain the relief she felt at learning that this thing had a name and a location, that there were people whose business it was to deal with it?" she wonders. Surrendered to her new circumstances-a material improvement, all things considered-Isobel finds herself falling into the sanatorium's rhythms. Though the patients are all bedridden, to varying degrees, the place has a social scene of its own, with the doctors, nurses, and patients forming a parallel universe outside of space and time. Witting's characterizations are staggeringly sharp-it is hard to imagine a novel more keenly observed-simultaneously heartbreaking and (subtly) hilarious, not because they're exaggerated, but because they are so unsettlingly, overwhelmingly true: Isobel's pathologically self-centered roommate ("You're not one of those people who read all the time, are you?"); her beloved Dr. Wang; the birdlike Miss Landers, who runs the sanatorium's knitting-based occupational therapy program. But as Isobel recovers, she must come to terms with her life outside the confines of this miniature world-and here, too, Witting is as astute and unsentimental as ever. A compassionate masterpiece.COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Isobel Callaghan is struggling to make a career as a writer in Sydney. She is isolated, poor and hungry, and fears she's going mad. Leaving her room in a boarding house in search of food, she has a breakdown on the way to the corner shop.
Waking in hospital, Isobel learns that she will be confined to a sanatorium in the Blue Mountains. There, among the motley assortment of patients, and with the aid of great works of literature, she will confront the horrors of her past. But can she find a way to face the future?
Confronting and compassionate, profound and funny, the second Isobel Callaghan novel is every bit as brilliant as its much-loved predecessor. It confirmed Amy Witting as one of the finest Australian writers of her time.
Amy Witting was born in Sydney in 1918. She attended Sydney University, then taught French and English in state schools. Beginning late in life she published six novels, including The Visit, I for Isobel,...
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