Late Connections

Aileen La Tourette

Bringing together a vibrant cast of celebrities-Charcot, Freud, Chanel, Colette, and Gilles de la Tourette, Late Connections is the story of Rose Kamper and her turbulent yet colourful and always eventful world. Based on the factual account of Kamper's shooting of la Touerette after years of humiliation as a former patient at the Salpêtrière in Paris, Late Connections is a stirring portrayal of
obsession and compassion. Often engaging, always charming, Late Connections has broad appeal, with characters that are spirited, cheeky, and unforgettably endearing.

...all of the characters are vividly drawn and La Tourette does a wonderful job of assembling real lives into a coherent and shapely plot. - SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Beautifully written and full of luscious descriptive detail, Late Connections paints a vivid picture of that volatile time in the history of psychiatry. - HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

Aileen La Tourette has always had a courageous sensitivity for the things modern novels don't talk about. This is how historical fiction ought to be ... serious joy.
- SARA MAITLAND, WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD

Late Connections

Paperback, 312pp
205x135mm
ISBN: 9781921325052
RRP: AU$26.95
June 2008
World


"He had not come to her bedside. He had passed her by. She had
been of no interest. She remembered looking up and begging him
with her eyes, and he had said no. His scorn had sealed his fate."

 


AILEEN LA TOURETTE was born in the USA but moved to England over 35 years ago where she currently lectures in Imaginative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University. She has written two books of poetry, Touching Base (2006, Headland Publications) and Downward Mobility (2004); two books of short stories, Oral History (2007) and, with Sara Maitland, Weddings and Funerals (1983); and two previous novels, Nuns and Mothers (1984) and Cry Wolf (1986). She has also written plays for BBC Radio 4 including, My Darling, My Darling, My Life and My Bride, a play about the death of Edgar Allen Poe.

 


EYEBABIES

David George

A chateau in the Dordogne, an accidental meeting between two very different women who find they have shared the same lover. Fabrice, a photographer, is the man they have loved, and he has in turn loved them, in his own way. Through Fabrice's novel we relive his two great love affairs, but his is not the only story: we also get very different versions from each of the women as we learn that Fabrice has been found deep beneath the chateau, babbling and catatonic in an ‘oubliette', a tiny prison in the ground where people are locked up and forgotten. Eyebabies is an enigmatic and colourful, existential drama. It is an intriguing portrayal of love and relationships that moves with the strength of its characterisations and dialogue.

Complex, intelligent, eloquent and dazzlingly successful. A work of  lyrical intensity, an epiphany of beauty. People and their masks, the eye of the photographic lens, the comforting rhythms of the novelist's prose, these combine to draw us deep into a world of love, passion and loss. Read the first page and you can't put the book down. Eyebabies  is an Australian novel with a difference, a must read.
Vijay Mishra, Professor of English Literature, Murdoch University; sometime chair of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the W.A. Premier's Book Awards

Eyebabies

Paperback, 256pp
205x135mm
ISBN: 9781921325045
RRP: AU$26.95
June 2008
World


"He tried to calm himself, but he couldn't sit, couldn't stand, couldn't lean, the walls of the oubliette cunningly, mercilessly curved. He kept slithering to the bottom, lying there, neck bent, spine curved. He tried to turn over, kneel on all fours, but his arms couldn't hold the weight of his body, and his hands slipped, fingers scraping against the smooth limestone-he collapsed, repeatedly, only to twist and turn again ... How long does it take to die?"

David George

DAVID GEORGE is an award-winning playwright, an international theatre director, and the author of six books on Asian theatre, religion and culture. He has a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, and speaks French, German, (rusty) Russian, and Chinese. He has lived and worked in England, France, Germany, California, Malaysia, China, New York and Australia. After living in France for the last few years, where he wrote Eyebabies, he has now retired to a house by a river in Western Australia to do what he's spent his life preparing himself to do: write novels, tell stories ...