Readings.com.au: Susan Johnson

On Beauty

In On Beauty Susan Johnson explores the role of beauty in our lives, and in her life in particular: ‘Sometimes I think my whole life has been one long search for beauty. I am Australian and as such I should be embarrassed to write a line like that, in a land where one must speak of beauty in whispers.’ She writes of where her search has taken her, how ‘beauty enters the body like desire’, and how beauty is nothing less than ‘life's call to order, life's bid to save it from itself’.

MUP’s new series Little Books on Big Themes pairs leading Australian thinkers and cultural figures with some of the big themes in life. Each author’s 10,000-word take on a chosen theme is presented as an eminently collectable hardback.

Susan Johnson is an Australian journalist and novelist, based in London. Her books include the novels Flying Lessons, A Big Life, The Broken Book and Life in Seven Mistakes, and the memoir A Better Woman. Her next novel, My Hundred Lovers, will be published in 2010.

Life In Seven Mistakes

You're pathetic,' her brother said. 'Still bleating about what mummy and daddy did to you when you're almost old enough to retire. Are you still going to be blaming your parents when you're seventy? Life's too short, Liz.' After years of patient, passionate effort, Elizabeth Barton's career as a ceramicist is finally taking off. She's about to fly to New York for her first solo show at one of the world's most prestigious galleries. First, though, she has to survive Christmas with her family on the Gold Coast. Why is it impossible to act our age in front of our parents? And how can we begin to care for ageing parents we've spent our lives trying to avoid? LIFE IN SEVEN MISTAKES is a black family comedy with an unexpected, and deeply moving, climax. Beautifully written, and imbued with a rich sense of irony, it is acclaimed Australian novelist Susan Johnson s finest achievement to date.

The Broken Book

Both very Australian and resoundingly international, The Broken Book confirms Johnson's status as one of the finest Australian writers . . . fiercely beautiful.' The Australian

Katherine Elgin grew up in a small coastal town in Australia, desperate to transcend her beginnings and make her mark. From her rebellious and contemplative childhood Katherine emerges as a stunningly beautiful young woman, with a voracious appetite for life s most interesting experiences and an overwhelming desire to write the best book she possibly can.

But beauty is a double-edged sword and throughout her life - from Sydney, to London, to the islands of Greece - Katherine carries the burden of being both siren and artist.

Mirroring truths of art and life, creativity and reality, The Broken Book is wonderfully rich, complex and compelling. Susan Johnson has created an audacious and original novel with an awe-inspiring ability to explore emotional truths.

Flying Lessons

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A Better Woman

Susan's Johnson's beautiful and confronting memoir of motherhood and the writing experience struck raw nerves and heartstrings in 1999 amongst both the public and the media, producing widespread word of mouth and brilliant reviews. This incredible response to Susan's first non-fiction project sets the scene for a very successful entrance into the Vintage market for the new B format paperback edition.

Check out the Isabel Allende quote below!

'I am writing these lines with tears in my eyes ... an extraordinary book from such a great writer and such a great woman.' Isabel Allende

'thrilling secrets and hard-won knowledge - and writing so fiercely beautiful the pages seem to tremble with the weight of their words.' Debra Adelaide, Sydney Morning Herald

'[A] wrenchingly courageous memoir . written with the poetic precision and pragmatic clarity of the survivor.' Andiee Paviour, Who Magazine

'[Susan Johnson has written a] searing account of the most profound attack on her identity' Anna King Murdoch, The Age

'The author has felt death brush against her and elegantly tells it . As a fellow writer I tremble for her, for how will she better this book? Jane Messer, Australian Review of Books

When acclaimed fiction writer Susan Johnson fell pregnant with her first child, nothing was further from her mind than the consequences of that potent life-giving act. And nothing was further from her mind than the possibility of her body twice failing to survive the moment of birth, resulting in an emergency temporary colostomy, nor the reverberations of her experience and how it would change the intimate knowledge she had of herself forever.

Confronting and disturbingly beautiful, A Better Woman is Susan Johnson's lilting, bittersweet chronicle of her life surrounding the births of her two precious sons and the new relationship she had to forge with herself, her family and the way she wrote. Her story, which forced her to come face to face with the limitations of her body and her trust in it, is an achingly personal insight into the evolution of her identity as a woman, writer, mother and partner. But transcending her loss of faith in what she knew and understood of herself is a keenly felt sense of power, of life and of hope.

Some of my close friends will be learning for the first time in these pages the full story of what happened to me after the birth of my two sons.

I did not wilfully deceive them. It was just that I could hardly bear to have been such a failure at having a baby, an event in human life we know to be both ordinary and extraordinary but which we take to be commonplace. An emergency temporary colostomy as a result of giving birth does not feature anywhere in our romanticised imagery of new mothers and babies triumphantly awash in flowers, breast milk and champagne.

Messages From Chaos

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