In Certain Circles

‘Harrower can pierce your heart.’ * Michael Dirda, Washington Post *
‘A scandalously overlooked writer.’ * Michelle de Kretser *
‘A coup…weirdly thrilling line by line…[its] dense and adult conversation crackles with a sense of moral urgency.’ – Delia Falconer * Australian *
‘Utterly hypnotic.’ * Eimear McBride, Irish Times *
‘She is brilliant on power, isolation and class.’ * Ramona Koval, Australian *
‘Harrower’s sparse prose is best read with careful concentration; it’s easy to miss a brilliant observation or an original turn of phrase…An Australian novelist of extraordinary talent.’ – Readings
‘Her insights into the nature of love, the role of women and the torsions of power in even the most ordinary relationship are bitter and sometimes cruel, wielded in the way that acute honesty may be, like a whip. Yet they are always delivered via the honeyed dipper of her prose.’ – Geordie Williamson * Monthly *
‘A novel of astonishing psychological insight exploring the darker aspects of human attraction.’ * Saturday Paper *
‘An exploration of the psychologies of entitlement and deprivation in the context of love.’ Book of the Week * Adelaide Advertiser *
‘Reading In Certain Circles gave me the thrill that only comes from the work of a major novelist.’ – The Conversation
‘In Certain Circles is subtle yet wounding, and very much alive.’ * Guardian *
‘A brilliant exploration of relationships, marriage, thwarted passion and the beauty and the price of love.’ * Herald Sun *
‘There are many wonderful things in this novel. Harrower’s skill in evoking a place is impressive. Her eye for oddities of behaviour, for quirks of character and for patches of pretentiousness is as sure as ever. The wry intelligence of her view of middle-class Australian life is evident throughout. Her writing is characteristically sharp and pithy. Whatever the reason behind her decision not to allow this novel to be released four decades ago, its rebirth is an event to be celebrated.’ – Andrew Reimer * SMH/Age/Canberra Times *
‘Exceptional’ * West Australian *
‘With its flavor of Henry James, Harrower’s rediscovered story is an odd, brittle yet impressive piece of work that exposes the complex passions beneath a drawing-room-scenario surface.’ * Kirkus Reviews *
‘A stark, uncompromising drama of marital imprisonment and psychological manipulation. In its atmosphere of dread and compulsion it has elements of Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic suspense novels. But Ms. Harrower’s fearsome objectivity and her bristling, beautiful prose come from modernist masters like Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth Bowen.’ * Wall St Journal *
‘Harrower was right about In Certain Circles being well written, but surely wrong to take its superb style for granted, as if mere literary muscle memory. Like the rest of her work, the novel is severely achieved: the coolly exact prose cannot be distinguished from the ashen exhaustion of its tragic fires…The book belongs with her best work, with The Watch Tower and The Long Prospect…[It] is more explicit than Harrower’s earlier work about ideological tensions between men and women. It is also broader in scope and not as angry—wiser and less hopeless.’ – James Wood * New Yorker *

Elizabeth Harrower was born in Sydney in 1928 and moved to London in 1951. She travelled extensively and began to write fiction. Her first novel Down in the City was published in 1957, and was followed by The Long Prospect a year later. In 1959 she returned to Sydney where she began working for the ABC and as a book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1960 she published The Catherine Wheel, the story of an Australian law student in London, her only novel not set in Sydney.

The Watch Tower appeared in 1966. No further novels were published until May 2014 when Harrower’s ‘lost’ novel, In Certain Circles, was released. Her work is austere, intelligent, ruthless in its perceptions about men and women. She was admired by many of her contemporaries, including Patrick White and Christina Stead, and is without doubt among the most important writers of the postwar period in Australia.

Elizabeth Harrower died in Sydney on 7 July 2020 at the age of ninety-two.

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