The Ivory Swing (23 page)

OTHER FICTION BY
JANETTE TURNER HOSPITAL

NORTH OF NOWHERE SOUTH OF LOSS

“I live at the desiccating edge of things, on the dividing line between two countries, nowhere, everywhere, in the margins.”

Janette Turner Hospital's stories have won widespread international acclaim for their dazzling style, intellectual depth and crackling energy. Her characters oscillate between estrangement and a sense of belonging, as Hospital herself has suffered geographical displacement from the Deep North of Australia to the Deep South of the United States.

Seven of these fourteen stories were included in the “North of Nowhere” section of
Collected Stones
(UQP 1995). Seven, including “South of Loss”, are published here in book form for the first time.

“Her stories are like brief cyclones wrapped around an unexpected center of calm.”

Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Sensuous, speculative fictions about the experience of dislocation … her stories develop like poems or meditations.”

New York Times Book Review

ISBN: 0 7022 3333 1

THE LAST MAGICIAN

This superb novel is richly textured and intellectually challenging, a tour de force from our most elegantly seductive writer.

The last magician is Charlie, the photographer, who monitors and records everything as he seeks the silent Cat through physical and emotional infernos. Charlie, Cat, Robbie and Catherine shared a childhood summer in a Queensland rainforest. But a death intruded on their charmed circle, binding them to complicity and silence.

Decades later, festering memories seep through into the present, in the same way as the desperate underside of a corrupt Sydney breaks through into tidy lives and well-kept secrets.

“Spellbinding reading, an adventure of the mind and heart that enthralls from first page to last … Haunting, disturbing, subversive.”

Newsday,
New York

“The real magic at work here is the writer's … an ambitious, intense and satisfying book.”

New York Times Book Review

ISBN: 0 7022 3401 X

CHARADES

This vibrant, superbly crafted novel explores the elusive boundaries between existence and imagination, memory and truth. From the subtropical lushness of Queensland's Tamborine rainforest to the claustrophobic bedroom of a Boston physicist, Hospital's characters breathe an atmosphere of passion and suspense. Charade Ryan, an enigmatic story-spinning Scheherazade, searches for a way to unravel the long-held secrets of her family origins.

“A journey of strange and beautiful complexity through some of the finest prose being written anywhere today.”

Toronto Star

“Janette Turner Hospital goes from strength to literary strength — ever brilliant in ideas, graceful in expression, resourceful in story — and in
Charades
throwing in, for good measure, a heady eroticism. I loved it!”

Fay Weldon

ISBN: 0 7022 3388 9

THE TIGER IN THE TIGER PIT

Like the rare Blue Wanderer butterfly, Emily Carpenter is never still for long. She flees emotional commitment, despite the longing of her eight-year-old son for family, and for the easygoing sheep farmer with whom she once found peace.

While Emily's eccentric mother works to reunite her scattered children, her once tyrannical father does his own scheming, made “irritable as the tiger in the tiger pit” by old age and regret. The scene is set for dramatic confrontation and unexpected revelations.

Janette Turner Hospital explores her fascination with the interweaving of time and place and displays the superlative skills as a storyteller that have won awards and critical acclaim for all of her published books.

“One feels the rush of life in her pages … a writer of remarkable talent who writes about family relationships with rare insight and compassion.”

Publishers Weekly

“Turner Hospital's gift for memorable characters and poetic prose come together in writing that is strong, wise and exciting.”

Ottawa Citizen

ISBN: 0 7022 3402 8

BORDERLINE

A meat truck is intercepted at the Canadian-American border, and a group of illegal immigrants is removed. Felicity watches from her car, and talks with Gus who is also waiting in the queue. When they realise a woman has been left behind, they impulsively smuggle her across the border. La Magdalena will change their lives irrevocably

In this, her third novel, Janette Turner Hospital transforms a thrilling and suspenseful story into a deadly resonant parable for our times, leaving her readers not just entertained, but enriched.

“Janette Turner Hospital is a stunningly stylish writer who turns almost every chapter into a virtuoso performance … this is a very clever, very fascinating book which should not be missed.”

Brenda Little,
Australian

“This book is brilliant in its several meanings: sparkling, intelligent, distinguished … Hospital is in complete and wondrous control of her material.”

Shirley Streshinsky,
San Francisco Chronicle

ISBN: 0 7022 3400 1

First published by McClelland & Stewart-Bantam Ltd, Canada 1982
Published 1991 by University of Queensland Press
Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
Reprinted 1994, 2000
This edition 2003

www.uqp.uq.edu.au

© Janette Turner Hospital

This book is copyright. Except for private study, research,
criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act,
no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior
written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

Typeset by University of Queensland Press

The epigram was taken from a Bengali song in praise of Krishna, translated by Edward C. Dimock, Jr, in
The Place of the Hidden Moon
©
1966 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The University of Chicago Press.

Sponsored by the Queensland Office
of Arts and Cultural Development.

Cataloguing in Publication Data

National Library of Australia

Hospital, Janette Turner, 1942– .

The ivory swing.

1. Canadians — India — Fiction. 2. Married women — Fiction.

3. India — Fiction. I. Title.

A823.3

ISBN 9780702256035 (ePub)