Book description
Winner of the J. R. Ackerley Award
This is the story of three people: Julia Blackburn, her father
Thomas and her mother Rosalie. Thomas was a poet and an alcoholic, who
for many years was addicted to barbiturates; Rosalie, a painter, was
sociable and flirtatious. After her parents were divorced, Julia's
mother took in lodgers, always men, on the understanding that each
should become her lover. When one of the lodgers started an affair
with Julia, Rosalie was devastated; when he later committed suicide
the relationship between mother and daughter was shattered irrevocably.
Or so it seemed until the spring of 1999, when Rosalie, diagnosed
with leukaemia, came to live with Julia for the last month of her life.
Julia Blackburn has written five books of non-fiction -
Charles Waterton
,
The
Emperor's Last Island
,
Daisy Bates in the Desert
,
Old Man Goya
and
With Billie
- a family memoir,
The Three of Us
, which won the 2009 J. R. Ackerley Award, and two novels,
The Book
of Colour
and
The Leper's Companions
, both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She is the author
of seventeen short stories specially commisioned by BBC Radio, a
selection of which were published in
My Animals and Other Family,
and four radio plays, including
The Spellbound Horses
, which was broadcast in 2011.
