The Biographers Lover is a novel about Australias complex relationship with memory, and the role gender plays in the ways we represent not only national myths but our private versus our public selvesWhy has no-one heard of Edna Cranmer? When a young woman is hired to write the life of an unknown artist from Geelong, she thinks it will be just another quick commission paid for by a rich, grieving family obsessed with their own history.
But Edna Cranmer was not a privileged housewife with a paintbrush. Ednas work spans decades. Her soaring images of red dirt, close interiors and distant jungles have the potential to change the way the nation views itself. Edna could have been an official war artist. Did she choose to hide herself away? Or were there people who didnt want her to become famous? As the biographer is pulled into Ednas life, she is confronted with the fact that how she tells Ednas past will affect her own future. This elegant and engrossing novel explores how we value and celebrate art and artists lives. The Biographers Lover reminds us that all memory is an act of curation.
