The Museum of Words

a memoir of language, writing, and mortality
Georgia Blain

‘A fine short memoir that looks both inward and outward to tell a patchwork story of four women and their shifting relationships with one another and with words, their medium for living … She does not try to make sense of what was happening and does not rail against fate’s cruelty. She does not argue for voluntary euthanasia and even notes that her mother, once an advocate, went quiet on the subject after she became ill. Blain simply continues to write, her voice faltering only occasionally, until her final sentence.’

Susan Wyndham, Weekend Australian

‘An incredible gift for those who loved Blain, those who valued her writing, and those who are still to discover this great writer … We are so lucky to be able to read it.’

Stella Charls, Readings

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‘[Museum of Words] is not a memoir of dying, although it is about illness and treatment, and the impossibility of saying goodbye. It moves between its subjects, using the writer’s illness reflexively, leading into description of the things most important to her … [A] fine book that looks chaos directly in the face and attempts to record it.’

Tegan Bennett Daylight, Sydney Morning Herald

‘A powerful meditation on the power of language and writing … wise, tender, and heart-rending.’

Nicole Abadee, AFR

‘The true story of Blain the woman: early 50s, loving and beloved and dealing with loss all around her, who understands both her art and her very life are slipping away.’

The Saturday Paper

‘Blain seamlessly reveals joys and complications of her family, and manages to provide some keen insights into the art and graft of telling stories … Museum is calm and tender and wise and brisk.’

The Listener

‘The Museum of Words is a very powerful, private essay on the end of being, invested with an unshakeable sense of presence, of fellow-humanity. Also with true verbal beauty and lyrical evocativeness. With her last book Blain proves that one can indeed, and most significantly, “go gently into that good night”.’

Mika Provata-Carlone, Bookanista

‘The paradox of writing about life while trying to live it, a perspective that perhaps comes only from looking back from the end.’

Katy Hershberger, Shelf Awareness

‘[A] passionate, piercingly observed farewell to what Blain loved most in life … its fragile strength, depth of insight and sheer hard-won existence make it a book to be read, treasured and shared as the parting gift it is.’ FOUR STARS

Jo Case, Books+Publishing

In late 2015, Georgia Blain was diagnosed with a tumour sitting right in the language centre of her brain. Prior to this, Georgia’s only warning had been a niggling sense that her speech was slightly awry. She ignored it, and on a bright spring day, as she was mowing the lawn, she collapsed on a bed of blossoms, blood frothing at her mouth.

Waking up to find herself in the back of an ambulance being rushed to hospital, she tries to answer questions, but is unable to speak. After the shock of a bleak prognosis and a long, gruelling treatment schedule, she immediately turns to writing to rebuild her language and herself.

At the same time, her mother, Anne Deveson, moves into a nursing home with Alzheimer’s; weeks earlier, her best friend and mentor had been diagnosed with the same brain tumour. All three of them are writers, with language at the core of their being.

The Museum of Words is a meditation on writing, reading, first words and last words, picking up thread after thread as it builds on each story to become a much larger narrative. This idiosyncratic and deeply personal memoir is a writer’s take on how language shapes us, and how often we take it for granted — until we are in danger of losing it.

Susan Wyndham, Weekend Australian

‘An incredible gift for those who loved Blain, those who valued her writing, and those who are still to discover this great writer … We are so lucky to be able to read it.’

Stella Charls, Readings

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Tegan Bennett Daylight, Sydney Morning Herald

‘A powerful meditation on the power of language and writing … wise, tender, and heart-rending.’

Nicole Abadee, AFR

‘The true story of Blain the woman: early 50s, loving and beloved and dealing with loss all around her, who understands both her art and her very life are slipping away.’

The Saturday Paper

The Listener

Mika Provata-Carlone, Bookanista

‘The paradox of writing about life while trying to live it, a perspective that perhaps comes only from looking back from the end.’

Katy Hershberger, Shelf Awareness

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Details

Format:Hardback

Size: 210mm × 148mm

Extent:176pp

ISBN (13):9781925322255

RRP:$29.99

Pub date:28 Aug 2017

Rights Held: World

High-res cover:Download Image

AWARDS

2018 Australian Book Design Awards, Best Designed Autobiography/Biography/Memoir Non-Fiction Cover - Winner 2018 Australian Book Design Awards, Best Designed Autobiography/Biography/Memoir Non-Fiction Cover - Long-listed 2018 Australian Book Industry Awards, Small Publishers' Adult Book of the Year - Short-listed 2018 Indie Book Awards, Non-fiction - Short-listed

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AUTHOR

Georgia Blain

Georgia Blain published novels for adults and young adults, essays, short stories, and a memoir. Her first novel was the bestselling Closed for Winter, which was made into a feature film. Her books have been shortlisted for numerous awards including the NSW, Victorian, and SA Premiers’ Literary Awards, the ALS Gold Medal, the Stella Prize, and the Nita B. Kibble Award for her memoir Births Deaths Marriages. Georgia’s works include The Secret Lives of Men, Too Close to Home, and the YA novel Darkwater. In 2016, Georgia published Between a Wolf and a Dog and the YA novel Special (Penguin Random House Australia). Between a Wolf and a Dog was shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize, and was awarded the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction and the 2016 University of Queensland Fiction Book Award. Georgia passed away in December 2016.