Beverley Farmer
Alone
“As she explores the frailty of emotional experience, Farmer places her characters in a luminous domain of elemental sensual experience.”
Giramondo Publishing, 2024. Originally published 1980.
Set in Melbourne in the late 1950s, and taking place over the course of two days and nights, Alone chronicles a young woman’s hopelessness and obsession provoked by the ending of a passionate relationship. A fledgling writer, estranged from her family and a dropout from university, she recalls her desire for her female lover, and contemplates ending her life. As she travels through a city fallen into cultural and economic malaise, shadowed by the constant threat of sexual violence, she reflects on the days and months that have brought her to despair.
Beverley Farmer’s debut novel, based partly on her own experiences, captures the romantic intensity and ironic reversals of youthful longing. Alone displays Farmer’s remarkable capacity for bringing different forms of writing together, prose and poetry, dialogue and dramatic monologue, and shows the formation of an unmistakable, lyrical literary voice.
About the Author
Beverley Farmer (1941–2018) was the author of four collections of short stories, including Milk, which won the NSW Premier’s Award for Fiction, and A Body of Water, and the novels Alone, The Seal Woman and The House in the Light, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. This Water: Five Tales was longlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize. It was her last work of fiction.