Local novelist untangles a Fremantle story

Director and Theatre Studies Lecturer at Notre Dame University Gabrielle Metcalf will launch The Bookshop on Jacaranda Street by Marlish Glorie at Dymocks Fremantle on Friday 8 May.

The Bookshop on Jacaranda Street tracks the journey of Helen, a middle-aged woman with the romantic dream of owning her very own second-hand bookshop.

Marlish Glorie said the idea for The Bookshop on Jacaranda Street came after a string of nights filled with awful nightmares. Unlike Helen, Glorie did not surrender to the urge to burn her bed, but, instead said the seed of the story that became The Bookshop on Jacaranda Street was sown.

Glorie, who has been writing for some thirty years said the novel took four years to get from the initial idea to the final manuscript.

“I’ve come to believe that I write with a fishing line because after about a year of writing I have what resembles a huge ball of tangled line.

“So it was with this book: one year of delirious fun, followed by three arduous, sobering years of unknotting a mighty tangle,” said Glorie.

Writing from her studio cell in Fremantle Prison, Glorie has composed numerous plays including The Butcher (directed by Gabrielle Metcalf) which performed at The Blue Room in 2002. Metcalf will launch The Bookshop on Jacaranda Street at the Fremantle launch.

The Bookshop on Jacaranda Street explores the way families possess the ability to get themselves into the most painful and complicated of situations, yet, manage to find some kind of resolution no matter how haphazard or inelegant.

The launch takes place at 6.30 pm on Friday 8 May at Dymocks Fremantle. Glorie will be at the launch to sign books and discuss her work.

Guests are welcome. To RSVP email admin@fremantlepress.com.au or 08 9430 6331.