Marion Halligan: 8 books

Somewhere in the kaleidoscope between life and art sits Clare, whose story is Marion Halligan's The Fog Garden. Clare, like Marion, is a woman of a certain age whose much-loved husband of thirty-odd years has just died. And Clare, like Marion, is a novelist. With the loss of such a marriage...

If you can manage to simultaneously practice laziness and purity you will eat pretty well, because the food will be simple and good.' In prose as sensuous and seductive as a fine wine and a tasty dish, Marion Halligan takes us with her on a wandering journey into her novels, between past and...

Marion Halligan returns to her heartland: the literary novel. It's Paris. Fanny and G rard fall in love in a way that surprises even them as their lives fill with good sex and loving companionship. But they long for a child to complete their happiness. Two of Fanny's lesbian friends feel similarly...

A beautiful man, and all she can do is tinker with his prose For Cassandra, an editor, books are easy. It's real life that's the challenge: it doesn't sit quietly and let itself be fixed. Right now Cassandra's life seems far too heavy on the suspense, while the romance is distinctly unconvincing. But...

On a promontory in a lake within a city built by the famed architect Walter Burley Griffin and his wife Marion Mahony, rises an elegant glass confection which is home to the best restaurant in the city - The Point. Here, in lamp-lit art deco splendour, comfortable well-heeled patrons like computer...

All is not as it seems in the calm, well-ordered streets of the nation's capital. After the turbulence of their courtship, Cassandra and the colonel have settled into wedded bliss - only to have it shattered by a death far too close to home. A friend's daughter is found dead from a drug overdose -...

'Why did Bluebeard kill his wives? Because that's what he did. It's a given. It's the plot. Until the lucky one, who is saved. The even more interesting question is: why did Mrs Bluebeard feel utterly unable to resist opening the door? Don't we all think, when it comes to these stories, that we'd...

A successful lawyer, bon vivant, loving husband and father, has a heart attack and dies while swimming in the local pool. A man apparently happily married, yet, with two divorces behind him and three puzzled children. In death it seems that he is not the person everyone thought. As his extended...