The Hard Seed
A Novel 2018
After years of living in the harsh Australian outback, Iris Bloom returns with her ailing husband to her hometown in the south. Old memories surface and begin to disturb and haunt her. Iris tries to make sense of her murky past through her writing. But she discovers that dangerous writing can sometimes have fatal consequences. Fearing she might reveal a dark secret they buried long ago, Iris’s family refuse to accept her back into the fold. After her death, Iris leaves her unpublished manuscript – dedicated to someone called Rose - in the hands of her solicitor. Iris’s letters are interwoven with her stories about intriguing but deeply troubled characters. Just what is fact and what is fiction in the stories Iris leaves behind? Why does this matter so? And who is Rose? Immensely readable, this psychological mystery is both emotionally shocking, but captivating until the end.
The spirit of Australian Gothic survives and thrives in Mary Pomfret’s Hard Seed, although few rural mysteries are as profound, or as captivating. - Laurie Steed
This poetic work at first skilfully confounds but enchants…- Sue Woolfe
The stories-within-stories of the multiple narrators, each one sounding a variation on the folk-tale theme of the outcast, orphaned heroine, peel from each other like spent rose petals, all the way down to the hard seed which is the novel's core. But a hard seed is also a resilient source of fertility. Building on the legacy of generations of women writers before her, Pomfret returns again and again to this source to create a novel of haunting originality. - Sue Gillett
Available from:
The Hobart Bookshop Salamanca Place Tas
East Avenue Books Clarence Park
Red Kanga Books Todd Mall Alice Springs
Or online Ginninderra Press http://www.ginninderrapress.com.au/fiction.html
Writing in Virginia's Shadow
A collection of short fiction 2013
This delightful suite of stories reflects on the writing lives of women today. Here Virginia Woolf casts her shadow, and also sheds her light on the stresses and the joys of creating fiction. Piquant and pithy, these are explorations of how it is for the woman writer with or without a room of her own. - Carmel Bird
…courageous and moving and funny and perceptive… - Ian Irvine
Writing in Virginia’s Shadow is abundant with themes and ideas about writers. It can be read as simply as a series of stories about the writers, or, it can be read as an insight into the state of the writer in all her phases, or, you may go deeper and read to examine the reflexive, post-modern style fan of meta- fiction, I find the latter adds a meaningful depth to the writing allowing a sense of realism that draws the reader in. Either way, I urge you to take your time with Writing in Virginia’s Shadow, and give it the thought that it asks you to, and it deserves. - Julie Proudfoot
http://proudfootblog.com/2014/03/20/writing-in-virginias-shadow-mary-pomfret
Available from:
Dymock's Books Bendigo Vic
Stonemans Bookstore Castlemaine Vic
Or online Ginninderra Press http://www.ginninderrapress.com.au/fiction.html
The cover is the work of artist and photographer John Monteath.
Cleaning out the Closet
A collection of short fiction 2014
Mary Pomfret's stories speak to the heart of family darkness, sibling rivalry, filial love and lost innocence, without for an instant being melodramatic or overwrought. These beautiful, compelling tales are peopled with complex characters and told by a writer who makes the domestic sublime.' - Alice Pung
Available from:
Dymock's Books Bendigo Vic
Stonemans Bookstore Castlemaine Vic
The Hobart Bookshop Salamanca Place Tas
East Avenue Books Clarence Park SA
Or online Ginninderra Press http://www.ginninderrapress.com.au/fiction.html
The cover is the work of Kathryn Harrison.
