Set in 1940s wartime England, the trilogy follows young Vera, who leaves her cultivated Midlands home to become a nurse in a military hospital and is catapulted into adulthood through unorthodox love entanglements with both men and women, two illegitimate children, and finally emigration to Australia, where, from her new vantage point-now a doctor and writer-she looks back on her life's journey. Combining the beauty of Virginia Woolf with the spare, heartbreaking insightfulness of Jean Rhys, the trilogy is both a literary tour de force and an accessible, universal portrait of a woman in search of sustaining love. The concluding volume, The Georges' Wife, is published here for the first time in the US. The first two volumes have long been out of print. North American readers can now experience "the most ambitious and accomplished work in Jolley's oeuvre" (J. M. Coetzee).
Industry Reviews
"[A] lyrically written, imaginatively observed and emotionally compelling work." -- Publishers Weekly "Vera is a remarkable protagonist, a quiet rebel involved in a struggle with societal and familial expectations... Jolley deserves to be counted among the great voices of the past century, and her trilogy deserves to be read, discussed, and adored." -- San Francisco Book Review "It's not often that I discover a writer who creates a character who I wish could be a real life friend...[The Vera Wright Trilogy] is a beautiful, rich, and layered masterpiece." -- Nina Sankovitch - The Huffington Post "Full of mystery ... [and] many, many pleasures-a string of characters worthy of Dickens, Jolley's joy in nature, in the sense of place, her love of poetry and music... something to re-read, again and again." -- Roberta Silman - World Books Review "A work of emotional depth and beauty, which will be enjoyed by anyone who likes to wrap themselves in compelling, artful fiction." -- MostlyFiction "Jolley makes the inner life of her protagonist the dramatic center of her work, giving the reader what feels like unfettered access to the emotional and psychological impact of any given moment." -- NewPages "Jolley's almost magical prose imbues the ordinary events of Vera's life with an incandescent strangeness." -- Howard County Times (Maryland) "The most ambitious and accomplished work in Elizabeth Jolley's oeuvre." -- J. M. Coetzee "Jolley transports us to 'the twilight between the fact and the imagined'...Just open this book to any page to see the strange, beautiful music she makes out of the raw material of her life." -- Karen Russell, author of St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves