Paint Your Wife

Paint Your Wife
Lloyd Jones
RRP:
NZ$ 37.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 29.60
Trade Paperback
h234 x 153mm - 304pg
19 Nov 2014 AU
International import eta 7-19 days
9781925095371
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
New Egypt is a small town on the slide. Businesses are failing, people are leaving. Men and women fall prey to craving elsewhere. A mural painted by Alma brings new interest in the town. During the Second World War, Alma, a painter, takes advantage of the boys being away and paints the women of the town in lieu of payment for his rat catching efforts. His special favourite is Alice, and soon their sessions turn into a real affair. Husband George returns from the war. To prove his love and reclaim his wife he sets out to move a hill - with a single wheelbarrow, all on his own. Years later, Alma revives his `in lieu of' payment so an abandoned mother living in the depressed town can make her way. For others looking to escape various corners of despair, paint your wife is the answer. In learning to look, they rediscover one another. Indifference gives way to appreciation. Paint Your Wife brims with rich stories and even richer characters. It is an ambitious, colourful, accessible novel in the style of Peter Carey's lllywhacker or Tim Winton's Cloudstreet and Dirt Music.
'A gentle, whimsical book...Jones's writing is easy and sophisticated, reminding me of Steinbeck at his humorous best...the whole fanciful sprawl is a delight.' Age 'A delightful read, moving and uplifting, and loaded with gorgeous prose...this new edition by Text Publishing has wonderfully evocative cover art by W. H. Chong. Highly recommended.' -- BookMooch '[This] playful, perceptive novel originally came out a decade ago. Its reappearance now completes Text's publication of his back list-and what an accolade that is...Rooted in domestic detail, yet always liable to soar into the fabulous, the narrative winds through all sorts of transformations towards reverie, reconciliation, and an epiphany of "just as you are, please"...Lloyd Jones has written recently that plot now matters less to him in his writing; that the exploration of language itself is becoming more of a preoccupation. The pleasures of this swooping, sensuous narrative make you hope there'll be room for both strengths in his future fiction.' Weekend Herald 'He's [Jones] an impressive writer who deserves accolades aplenty for his carefully observed literary landscapes.' Big Issue Australia 'This gentle book about a small community is by an accomplished wordsmith who makes it seem deceptively easy to write such flowing prose.' Good Reading
Lloyd Jones was born in New Zealand in 1955. His best-known novel is Mister Pip, which won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the 2008 Kiriyama Prize Fiction Category, the 2008 Montana Award for Readers Choice, the Montana Fiction Award and the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry. It was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and has been made into a major feature film, directed by Andrew Adamson (Shrek and Narnia). His other books include Hand Me Down World, The Book of Fame-which won the Deutz Medal for Fiction at the 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Awards and the Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize-Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance and Biografi. He has also published a collection of short stories, The Man in the Shed, and an acclaimed memoir, A History of Silence. Lloyd Jones lives in Wellington.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781925095371
Published: 19 Nov 2014
Published In: Australia
Imprint: Text Publishing Company
Publisher: Text Publishing Co
Format: Trade Paperback
Height: 234mm
Width: 153mm
Pages: 304
Dewey: 823.92

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