Honour's Mimic

We are alike, Kathy thought. You are a desperate one, too. She was incredulous that she could be so happy when it was so perfectly clear that the situation was impossible, could not possibly last, and that in any case this man was doomed already.

In this third solo novel, Charmian Clift broke the rules of the romance genre by her representation of a relationship between a middle class Australian woman and a Greek sponge diver who is an outcast even within his own society. Both are 'desperate' trapped in loveless marriages and overcome by a sense of nameless dread. But when these twin souls fall in love in the ruins of an ancient citadel above the port-town of a remote and poverty-stricken Greek island, 'honour' becomes 'mimic' a false imitation of itself and is cast aside, together with unhappiness and fear.

Honour's Mimic combines the authentic Greek setting of Charmian Clift's travel memoirs with the fine writing that has caused her to be described as Australia's greatest essayist.

About the Authors

Charmian Clift was born in the coastal town of Kiama, New South Wales, on 31 August 1923. After serving as a lieutenant in the Australian Army, she joined the staff of the Melbourne Argus newspaper, and in 1947 married fellow journalist George Johnston. The next year, the couple’s collaborative novel High Valley won the Sydney Morning Herald prize. Fleeing the political claustrophobia of Australia under the Menzies government, in 1952 Charmian and George headed to London. Two years later, they escaped even further, to the Greek islands, where over the next decade they raised three children and created a legend. During this period, Clift wrote the memoirsMermaid Singing and Peel Me A Lotus, and her two novels, Honour’s Mimic and Walk to the Paradise Gardens. After the family returned to Australia in 1964, Charmian Clift began writing a weekly column that appeared in the Melbourne Herald and the Sydney Morning Herald. Charmian Clift died in 1969.

Nadia Wheatley is the editor of Sneaky Little Revolutions: Selected essays of Charmian Clift and The End of the Morning: The never-before-published novel by Charmian Clift. She is also the author of The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. Described by critic Peter Craven as ‘one of the greatest Australian biographies’, this was the Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year, 2001, and won the NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize (2002). After twenty years it remains the classic account of the life and work of this transformational Australian writer. Nadia Wheatley’s other works include the award-winning memoir Her Mother’s Daughter and Radicals – Remembering the Sixties, written in partnership with Meredith Burgmann.