An insightful and moving story of life in nineteenth and early twentieth century Australia, from one of the country's most celebrated biographers.
Brenda Niall is one of Australia's foremost biographers. She is the author of several award-winning biographies, including her acclaimed accounts of the Boyd family and her portrait of the Durack sisters, True North. In 2016 she won the Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal and the National Biography Award for Mannix. In 2004 she was awarded the Order of Australia for 'services to Australian literature, as an academic, biographer and literary critic'.
‘Niall's skill is to listen with a discerning ear, to acknowledge
the views and to seek always the social, political and historical
context and influences. Her craft as a skilled biographer gives her
grandmother a fresh life, one that will resonate with many in
families of similar background, but wider than that, provide
another piece in the picture of the European settlement of
Australasia.’
*Otago Daily Times*
‘Agnes’s story charts the changing role of women in the colonies,
the impact of the world wars and the rise and fall of family
fortunes…Niall’s beautifully told tale will have echoes in
thousands of other Australian families.’
*SA Weekend*
‘An affectionate tribute to someone who quietly but firmly shaped
her own place in the world.’
*Books+Publishing*
‘Can You Hear the Sea? creates a portrait, from other kinds of
evidence, of a woman whose silence sealed her most intimate
moments. With a light touch, Niall looks at her grandmother’s life
through the prism of the imaginative world in which she was
immersed…Aggie’s is a story of independence and grit: understated,
necessary, uncelebrated.’
*Australian*
‘A fascinating subject…Hopefully people still find ways to write
biographies that so adeptly capture the particularity of lived
experience.’
*Saturday Paper*
‘Insightful.’
*Yours*
‘Aggies gift of the shell and the empty box put two questions to
Brenda Niall. They also addressed her craft and her desire. Could
she recreate the sounds and feel of the past out of unpromising
materials, and could she fill the empty box while recognising that
it remained empty? This book answers both questions with assurance.
One might hope that among the next generation of Aggie’s
descendants another young person will hear in it the sea that flows
into story telling.’
*Eureka Street*
‘Niall’s beautifully told tale will have echoes in thousands of
other Australian families.’
*SA Weekend*
‘Gentle and engaging biography…Aggie was undoubtedly a remarkable
and intelligent woman, and this book is a lovely testament to her
life.’
*Good Reading*
‘[Niall] is clear about her process, asking questions, noting gaps,
offering her own memories with an easy blend of intimacy and
distance, in an authoritative yet conversational voice…Niall writes
with respect for a woman who built a dynasty across centuries, was
adventurous and stable, traditional and ahead of her time, English
and embodied the best of Australia.’
*Australian Book Review*
‘Brenda Niall has written perceptively about the different but
complementary personalities of Mary and Elizabeth Durack. She has
done the two sisters proud in this splendid and informative
work.’
*Catholic Weekly on True North*
‘Brenda Niall, the distinguished biographer of the novelist Martin
Boyd and author of a swag of other books, has written a fond and
fluent life of Mannix that captures the crispness and the passion,
the humour and the enigma of the man who meddled with politics like
a master magician.’
*Sydney Review of Books on Mannix*
'Few other writers have such an ability to understand and describe
the relationships that create the characters of her subjects. [A]
beautiful and mellow story…[with] a vibrant narrative energy.’
*Sydney Morning Herald*
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