A Pure Clear Light

‘Both funny and affecting…her gift for capturing conversation takes us deep into the hearts of both characters.’ * West Australian *
‘Witty, clear-eyed and provocatively perceptive, Madeleine St John deserves a lasting readership.’ * Canberra Times *
‘St John is one of those astonishing masters of dialogue such as Harold Pinter or Helen Garner, though faster than either, so that the effort of her speech is like great tennis or ballet…It’s a book about the search for truth and St John has an all but flawless ear for it.’ * Australian *
‘A Pure Clear Light is funny, cruel and finely written, exploring the place and time where marriages and affairs come undone…pitch perfect.’ * Sunday Times *

Madeleine St John was born in Sydney in 1941. Her father, Edward, was a barrister and Liberal politician. Her mother, Sylvette, committed suicide in 1954, when Madeleine was twelve. Her death, she later said, ‘obviously changed everything’.

St John studied Arts at Sydney University, where her contemporaries included Bruce Beresford, Germaine Greer, Clive James and Robert Hughes. In 1965 she married Chris Tillam, a fellow student, and they moved to the United States where they first attended Stanford and later Cambridge.

From Cambridge, St John relocated to London in 1968 with the hope that Chris would follow. The couple did not reunite and the marriage ended.St John settled in Notting Hill. She worked at a series of odd jobs, and then, in 1993, published her first novel, The Women in Black, the only book she set in Australia. When her third novel, The Essence of the Thing (1997), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, she became the first Australian woman to receive this honour.

St John died in 2006. She had been so incensed after seeing errors in a French edition of one of her novels that she stipulated in her will that there were to be no more translations of her work.

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