Author Events: Victoria Purman
We are very happy to be involved with several events this month to promote Victoria Purman’s new book A Woman’s Work.
11 am, Saturday 29 April
Ngutungka Library , West Lakes
9 Charles Street
West Lakes
Free event, bookings preferred.
6.30 pm, Tuesday 2 May
Mt Barker Community Library
Dumas Street
Mt Barker
Tickets $5 + booking fee
7 Pm, Thursday 4 May
Unley Library
181 Unley Road
Unley
Tickets $2.50 to be paid on booking, bookings essential. Book online via Eventbrite or phone 8372 5100.
The astonishingly rich prize of the 1956 Australian Women’s Weekly cookery competition offers two women the possibility of a new kind of future, in this compassionate look at the extraordinary lives of ordinary women – our mothers and grandmothers – in a beautifully realised post-war Australia.
It’s 1956, and while Melbourne is in a frenzy gearing up for the Olympics, the women of Australia are cooking up a storm for their chance to win the equivalent of a year’s salary in the extraordinary Australian Women’s Weekly cookery contest.
For two women, in particular, the prize could be life-changing. For war widow and single mum Ivy Quinn, a win would mean more time to spend with her twelve-year-old son, Raymond. Mother of five Kathleen O’Grady has no time for cooking competitions, but the prize could offer her a different kind of life for herself and her children, and the chance to control her own future.
As winter turns to spring both women begin to question their lives. For Kathleen, the grinding domesticity of her work as a wife and mother no longer seems enough, while Ivy begins to realise she has the courage to make a difference for other women and tell the truth about the ghosts from her past.
But is it the competition prize that would give them a new way of seeing the world – a chance to free themselves from society’s expectation and change their own futures – or is it the creativity and confidence it brings?
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