Charlotte Wood

Charlotte Wood grew up in a large family in country New South Wales. She is the author of three critically acclaimed novels. The first, Pieces of a Girl, won the Jim Hamilton Award for an unpublished manuscript and in 2000 was shortlisted for several other prizes. Her second book, The Submerged Cathedral, was shortlisted for the 2005 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, South East Asia/South Pacific region the same year. The Children, Charlotte's third novel, was published in 2007 to resounding praise. She has worked as a journalist and editor for many years, and lives in Sydney with her husband.

Website: http://www.charlottewood.com.au/

Books by Charlotte Wood

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  The Submerged Cathedral

  Spanning many years, travelling across Australia's vast continent and through some of Europe's great cities, The Submerged Cathedral is a beguiling, heartbreaking story of paradise and the fall, of sacrifice and atonement, and of sisterly love and rivalry. Most of all, however, it is about an enduring and sacred love - a love stronger than death - and the journeys undertaken in its name. Written in spare, haunting prose, this novel is a work of the highest literary merit, as well as a timeless love story that will enthrall readers.

  The release of Charlotte Wood's acclaimed first novel, Pieces of a Girl, marked her as a young writer of great promise; The Submerged Cathedral thrillingly confirms that promise with astonishing assurance and lyricism.

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  Pieces of a Girl

  Throughout her childhood Ivy is punished for the theft of her mother’s life.

  Then Victor arrives suddenly one suburban Sydney summer, and stays, bringing with him the possibility of a father – but also the terrible danger that he might discover June and Ivy’s secret.

  Twenty years later, when Ivy is uneasily married to Linford, she searches out Victor. In his house by the beach, past and present collide.

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  The Children

  Three adult siblings return home to the country town of their childhood when their father is critically injured in a fall. They each have their own reasons for dreading the homecoming, and bring with them the remnants and resentments of years before. Mandy has escaped a worthy marriage and a troubled past to live a traumatic and tenuous life reporting the hell of the world's war zones. Cathy can't get interested in anything much, and Stephen has been estranged from his father since an incident from his adolescence. Their father's impending death brings them together, but how will they forgive each other the transgressions of the past?

  In the hospital where their father lies in a coma, a young wardsman, Tony, has been waiting for Mandy to come home. Since they met by accident years before, he has obsessively watched her reports from Bosnia, Beirut and Fallujah, devouring her image on television and making plans for their life together. He knows her worst secret, but she doesn't even remember who he is. And when she does, it's too late to stop what's been set in motion

  Beautifully written, funny, moving and filled with shocks of recognition and revelation, The Children builds relentlessly to a climax of chilling and devastating force. This novel marks Charlotte Wood as one of our finest writers.

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