Elsie blogs on Jane Sinclair for An Author for All Seasons with Jane's new work Shy Love Smiles & Acid Drops

Jane Sinclair shares her book and ebook, ‘Shy Love Smiles and Acid Drops’ – at the Mentone Public Library. ‘An Author for All Seasons’ Series 12 on 12 November 2022.  

Jane Sinclair at Mentone Public Library
12 Nlovember 2022


Wow! Jane Sinclair had us all ears and wanting more when she presented at The Mentone Public Library, a tell all (or almost) book, “Shy, Love, Smile and Acid Drops.”

We who merely read history were intrigued. Jane lived through it!

Jane used her letters between her deceased parents that documented in 1st person the bohemian freedom of artistic world, when she accompanied her charismatic mother, Jean Langley, who was having an affair with Arthur Boyd at the time, to London.  Her estranged father, John Sinclair, was a Music critic for the Evening Herald at the time.

The letters document this interval in their lives from 1960 to 1962, a whirlwind of adventures mixing with the art elite of Australia and Europe, particularly the Heide Group of artists and their associates.  Nothing was off bounds and they lived an exotic and sometimes chaotic life, not caring for society’s rules and moral judgments. 

It was only in hindsight that Jane realised what an inside look she had enjoyed.

Jane has the inside info and kept the disappointingly small group of us at her presentation, delighted and enthralled as she deviated from her script and filled in many blanks.  Audience member, John, a ceramic sculptor, knew a different Jean – the academic artist - who classified and painted Mornington Peninsular wild flowers which she published in three books on the subject. 

Jean’s mother was a complex and fragile character and the push and pull of the letters between ex-husband and ex-wife underlies this.

She riled at him but she needed him to rile against.  It seemed that her ex husband was one of the few constants in her life.

 

Blog post by Elsie Johnstone. Photography by Nathaniel Davies

 

For information on purchase of the book you can visit the publishers website: https://www.hybridpublishers.com.au/product/shy-love-smiles-and-acid-drops-letters-from-a-difficult-marriage/

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Judy's Open Mic reflection, 24 June 2023

Judy's Open Mic reflection, 24 June 2023 Last Saturday (24 June 2023) we had a great ‘Open Mic’ session. Stimulating writings by several members revealed their literary talents either through ‘in depth’ revelations of lives or humorous accounts of every day observations.  Pip, Jan and Elsie opened up about their inner thoughts giving us a deeper understanding of even our own lives. Bruce was in poetic and artistic form, and Graeme took a light-hearted look at Russian politics. Word choice and poetic pattern were exemplary in both cases. Terri, Tony and Judy attempted another radio play script, unrehearsed, which sadly needed better secretarial management (my bad!). Mind you Terri did a superb ‘boy voice’ for her character struggling up Balcombe Rd with a horse and dray in 1899 going to the races at Mentone Race Course; and Tony was equally in charge of his masculine character. Ron also had stories about a Jack Russell named Jill,   (There is a Jack and Jill Russell joke there somew
Read more

Lover, Husband, Father, Monster and the art of coercive control - Author talk with Graeme and Elsie Johnstone

Image
Lover, Husband, Father, Monster and the art of coercive control What a pleasure it was to have Elsie and Graeme present with us on the difficult topic of coercive control on Saturday, 15 July, using their trilogy of books as a springboard for conversations. Graeme and Elsie Johnstone wrote three inter-connecting novels on this topic under the banner of ‘Lover, Husband, Father, Monster’, entitled ‘Her Story’, ‘His Story’ and ‘The Aftermath’. The works are best read in the order of 1 The woman’s perspective 2 The man’s perspective and 3 The views of those who it affected.  When they were working on these books, Elsie and Graeme decided to write every time it rained and being Ireland, they wrote a ‘bloody lot’. Their task was to find out ‘What drives two men on either side of the planet to commit such awful acts, both in Australia and Ireland, and how have their marriages come to this?’   The novel is set in Dublin, and it focuses on the marriage of Jennifer, a legal graduate, and Stewart
Read more

Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder Author talk review and Writer Meets Reader promotion

Image
Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder and Kerryn Mayne coming again for Writer meets reader Kerryn Mayne.  What a breath of fresh air! Some people are born to speak in public and Kerryn is one of those lucky ones. We could have listened to her all day and not been bored. A full house at our Mentone Public Library was entertained and enthralled as we listened to Kerryn traverse many subjects – life as seen by a police officer, the busy and sometimes hectic life of a mother of four children under five, two of them nine-month-old twins, living with a young family in Aspendale Gardens, the goodness in almost everybody, even hardened criminals (there but for the grace of God, etc).  And those were just the side topics! What Kerryn was there for was to speak to us about the journey she took through pregnancy and COVID to produce a magnificently entertaining novel, ‘Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder’, a sort of crime fiction / psychological study / philosophical / human story, set in Belgrave abo
Read more