The Happiness Glass
Carol Lefevre is an Adelaide-based writer whose book, The Happiness Glass, explores the imaginative terrain between essays and short fiction. The narrative takes us from remote NSW to New Zealand and England through a series of deeply affecting experiences of poverty, domestic violence, loneliness, infertility, adoption and grief. Her writing is sharp, moving, insightful and beautifully poetic.
But what did teenage girls in country towns want with Latin and French and art? What use would it be to them?
The literary longings of a studious girl born into a working class family, hot afternoons in a dust-plain Wilcannia schoolhouse; the temptation to stay, and the perils of breaking free - The Happiness Glass reflects complex griefs in the life of Lily Brennan.
Lily’s story allows the author to navigate some of the difficulties of memoir, and out of its bittersweet blend of real, remembered, and imagined life, the portrait of a writer gradually emerges.
In fiction that forms around a core of memory, life writing that acknowledges the elusiveness of truth, Carol Lefevre has written a remarkable, risk-taking book that explores questions of homesickness, infertility, adoption, and family estrangement, in Lily Brennan's life, and in her own.
A superb collection I read with relish and grief.
–Brian Castro, author of Shanghai Dancing
2018 | ISBN 9781925581638 | Paperback | 210 x 148 mm | 154 pp
Table of Contents
ONE
Burning with Madame Bovary
Stars of the Milky Way
At the Hotel Santos
The Wasps’ Nest
TWO
Bearings
Time Passes
THREE
Palaces of Loss
Changes of Address
FOUR
Kissing it Better
The Borrowed Days
FIVE The Happiness Glass
The Weight of Happiness
Carol Lefevre on The Happiness Glass and melding essays with fiction
Reviews
This is a quietly powerful book; part memoir, part linked short stories. Lefevre’s own voice is shared with the fictional Lily Brennan, her alter ego, moving forwards and backwards to her own life, allowing the flexibility and relative anonymity of fiction. This makes for delicious reading, as the different forms expand, reflect, and hide each other.
...a beautiful and complex disquisition on pain and loss, Lefevre moving with grace across a wide range of references.
…These scenes are worthy of Patrick White. There are many pleasures in this short, cunningly crafted, deeply felt book, not the least of which is consistently good writing.
Subscribers to ABR can read the review here.—Susan Varga, Australian Book Review
PICK OF THE WEEK, 24 November 2018
Weaving essay and life writing, the tissues of thought and remembrance with the techniques of fiction, this delighted me because it channels the literary spirit of so many writers I admire, while remaining utterly distinctive. Carol Lefevre takes the sort of ruminative "faction" you get in W.G. Sebald and traces the making of a writer, Lily Brennan, from her childhood in a country town in South Australia in the 50s and 60s to the trials and adventures of adult life. It's no surprise that Amy Witting is one of Lefevre's literary heroes, and Lily's voice possesses a steely wit, intellectual curiosity and emotional intelligence fans of Witting's will be struck by. It's a book limned and enriched by feminist thought, probing how women must run rings around literature (and often life) to write themselves into it.—Cameron Woodhead, The Age / Sydney Morning Herald
The Happiness Glass is one-of-a-kind, with its part memoir, part fiction structure. Yet no section of this insightful and heartbreaking book does not resound with a deep truth and the air of greatly-moving accuracy.
Read the full review here.—Angela Wauchop, Backstory Journal
LeFevre has a distinctive and elegant prose style, characterised by lyricism, poignancy and understatement, often with an undertone of melancholy that enhances the emotionally raw nature of many of these pieces. She has a unique ability to write about deeply affecting personal experiences such as grief, loneliness, homesickness, motherhood and parenting without sentimentality or self-pity...It’s compelling reading, honest, engaging, and an example of how a brave leap across the genre divide can be fruitfully accomplished.
Read the full review here.—Anne Jenner, annejenner.net
I found this to be a powerful book that touches not only on fact and fiction, but also on motherhood at the core of women’s lives. I recommend it gladly. Thanks as always to Spinifex Press for publishing books like this one.
Read the full review here.
—Marilyn Brady, Me, You and Books
FIVE STARS. A beautiful meditative memoir on a life full of dreams and longing, some of them fulfilled, some of them not. So honest it burns.
—Rachel Hennessy, author, GoodReads
RIVETING READS FOR THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS 20th December 2018
With seamless skill, Lefevre blurs boundaries between memoir and fiction. Her poetic prose is infused with melancholic beauty, and she writes of home, of belonging and of memories lost — and of what it is to be a woman in a patriarchal world. Her heartbreaking account of infertility and adoption will stay with you long after you turn the final page. View here.—Katherine Arguile, Booknook & Bean, indaily.com.au
This is a thought-provoking and esoteric book that offers a stream-of-consciousness journey familiar to many women.
Read full review here.
—Cass Moriarty (author), cassmoriarty.com
Lefevre’s linking of fact and fantasy is rich, multiplying the experience to induce various resonances and add depth.
Read the full comparative review here.
—Moya Costello, TEXT journal