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Winner of the Queensland Literary Awards 2012 - Fiction

Book Description

An Australian publishing event. The third and final part in the epic story of Edith Campbell Berry.

It is 1950, the League of Nations has collapsed and the newly formed United Nations has rejected all those who worked and fought for the League. Edith Campbell Berry, who joined the League in Geneva before the war, is out of a job, her vision shattered. With her sexually unconventional, husband, Ambrose, she comes back to Australia to live in Canberra.

Edith now has ambitions to become Australia's first female ambassador, but while she waits for a Call from On High, she finds herself caught up in the planning of the national capital and the dream that it should be 'a city like no other'.

When her communist brother, Frederick, turns up out of the blue after many years of absence, she becomes concerned that he may jeopardise her chances of becoming a diplomat. It is not a safe time to be a communist in Australia or to be related to one, but she refuses to be cowed by the anti-communist sentiment sweeping the country.

It is also not a safe time or place to be 'a wife with a lavender husband'. After pursuing the Bloomsbury life for many years, Edith finds herself fearful of being exposed. Unexpectedly, in mid-life she also realises that she yearns for children. When she meets a man who could offer not only security but a ready-made family, she consults the Book of Crossroads and the answer changes the course of her life.

Intelligent, poignant and absorbing, Cold Light is a remarkable stand-alone novel, which can also be read as a companion to the earlier Edith novels Grand Days and Dark Palace.

About The Author

Frank Moorhouse has written fiction, non-fiction, screenplays and essays and edited many collections of writing. He is the author of Forty-Seventeen, Grand Days and Dark Palace.

This is a month for long awaited returns, and how richly we are being rewarded. In an Australian publishing event, Frank Moorhouse has finally delivered the final part in this trilogy based around Edith Campbell Berry and the League of Nations. I won't disclose when I started reading Moorhouse but suffice to say that the first "Edith" book, Grand Days, published in 1993 was certainly not my first Moorhouse. In any case, I still remember the sense of excitement reading that one, and then its sequel, Dark Palace.

‘I approached the reading of COLD LIGHT with some trepidation. Being such a fan of Edith’s has its downsides. Would Edith still be the Edith I imagined? Would she age authentically? Would the next part of her life do her justice? And there she was, back with all her foibles, her charm and insight, her adventure and mistakes. She is so Edith and I was so not disappointed.’ Margie Seale, MD, Random House Australia What fictional character would you most like to be? I’d quite like to be Edith Campbell Berry from Frank Moorhouse’s Grand Days. She’s game for anything, living in the centre of the world, surrounded by passion and idealism and intrigue. Emily Maguire, author 'An irreducibly rich, sustained and complex work of the imagination.' THE INDEPENDENT Moorhouse has for a long time been one of the most original and professional of Australian writers in the world of literature and English. Grand Days is the summit of this achievement.' GEOFFREY DUTTON, AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW 'Edith Campbell Berry is one of the most winning women in contemporary fiction...There is colour galore - a risque interlude in Paris, a Geneva riot, friendships made and broken, moments of real pathos and terror. The book would make an extraordinarily glamorous movie, and most actresses would brawl to play sexy, smart, plucky Edith.' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 'Funny, scary and extremely sexy...Truly a grand book.' UK VOGUE

ISBN: 9781741661262
Series: Edith Trilogy
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 704
Published: 1st November 2011
Publisher: Random House Australia
Dimensions (cm): 23.1 x 15.7  x 5.6
Weight (kg): 0.894