One Life

When Kate Grenville’s mother died she left behind many fragments of memoir. These were the starting point for One Life, the story of a woman whose life spanned a century of tumult & change. In many ways Nance’s story echoes that of many mothers & grandmothers, for whom the spectacular shifts of the twentieth century offered a path to new freedoms & choices. In other ways Nance was exceptional. In an era when women were expected to have no ambitions beyond the domestic, she ran successful businesses as a registered pharmacist, laid the bricks for the family home, & discovered her husband’s secret life as a revolutionary. 

One Life is an act of great imaginative sympathy, a daughter’s intimate account of the patterns in her mother’s life. It is a deeply moving homage by one of Australia’s finest writers.

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Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Her bestselling novel The Secret River received the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, & was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize & the Miles Franklin Literary Award. The Idea of Perfection won the Orange Prize. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Lilian’s Story, Dark Places, & Joan Makes History. 

Kate's most recent book is One Life: My Mother’s Story. 

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‘What a difficult thing it must have been to write, but what a treasure [Grenville] has given us...Evocative & fascinating, this brave & heartfelt tribute will appeal to anyone interested in their own family story, Australian history, or the lives of women.’ —Books & Publishing 

‘Losing your mother is a turning point in everyone’s life...Kate Grenville has translated that revelation into a totally mesmerising story which reads not like a memoir, but rather like a perfectly paced novel.’ — Australian Women's Weekly 

‘Real life painted with with an almost fictional verve, it’s an intensely engaging portrait of a world in flux.’ — New Daily