A Dangerous Daughter

Here she comes!

3 Comments

In a matter of days my second novel, A Dangerous Daughter, will be released into the world. I await its birth with some trepidation, hoping that the characters portrayed therein will enlighten and amuse, rather than cause offence or anxiety. You see, this book is based on a true story; that of my own early life. It tells a story of loneliness and pain as well as enlightenment and joy. Although some characters are inspired by those I knew in my youth, I have gone to some lengths to conflate, disguise and invent new characters. SO that my heroine’s sister is a conflation of my own two sisters but nothing like either of them. Most importantly I want readers to know that the main character, Ivy Morgenstern (that’s an imagined portrait of her above) is definitely not me. For a start I was a weedy, dark-haired child, nothing like the freckly auburn-haired teenager gazing at you with eyes both challenging and curious. So to my readers, including extended family and lifelong friends, i say to you: do not take offence. Above all, do not judge the characters too harshly, remembering they are not real people, but the products of my imagination. My book will be launched into the world on June 24, at The Bookshop, the only independent bookshop in Darwin. If you can come along at 5pm that night I would love to see you, and to sign one […]

Read More →

A Dangerous Daughter

Why I Wrote A Dangerous Daughter

4 Comments

“Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.”  Sigmund Freud. My story began more than 50 years ago. At the age of 13, I began refusing food, and my weight dropped dramatically. This was seen as wayward, even wicked, behaviour. Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT), a primitive and brutal practice in the 1950s, failed to cure my mysterious condition. Partly to protect my parents and sisters from witnessing my decline, and partly as a last ditch effort to ‘cure’ me, I was exiled from my family in New South Wales, and spent several painful years with relatives in Perth, Western Australia. By the age of 15, starvation had wreaked extensive damage to my body and mind. I was given two months to live. I was inspired to write the novel A Dangerous Daughter by the need to understand my past. Rather than exorcising my demons, the creative process pulled me back into those dark years. Reliving the trauma slowed the writing process, but the thought of helping other young people and their parents kept me going.  In the 1950s in Western Australia, the term “anorexia nervosa” was not generally known, although the illness had been identified as early as1873 by Sir William Gull. So, it was inevitable that the victim was often blamed for her incomprehensible symptoms. Miraculously, through the work of my psychoanalyst, and my own fierce will to survive, I went on to write this book, and hopefully to help others who are […]

Read More →

ASSIA WEVILL

The Joys and Perils of the Writing Life

Leave a Comment

The Joys and Perils of the Writing Life So here I am, as Abraham said to the Lord when offering up his son for sacrifice. “Here I Am” is the title of a wonderful new book by Jonathan Safran Foer, a monumental work close to 1000 pages, exploring themes of cultural identity, fidelity and betrayal, the ephemeral nature of love, families functional and dysfunctional, and what makes them so. As for me myself and I, this post is in the nature of an apology to you, my readers, for my untoward absence. SInce I last posted back in April, life has overtaken me. There’s been illness, convalescence, slow recovery, as well as the joys of grandchildrens’ birthdays. and celebrations of their achievements, some sojourns in beautiful Darwin, home of my daughters and grandsons, and the minutiae of everyday life. On the writing side, I’ve been hard  at work on my new novel, ‘A Difficult Daughter’, and preparing my first novel. ‘Capriccio’, for publication. This entailed a major rewrite, mostly in appeasement to Faber and Faber, publishers of the works of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and the Hughes Estate. Like Jonathan Bate, I fell foul of the Estate when requesting permission to quote thirteen lines of Hughes’s poetry, fully expecting dispensation for such a small amount of material. The lines I quoted were used to introduce chapters, each of which was given the title of one of the ‘Capriccio’ poems […]

Read More →