Foxybaby.

New York, NY Penguin Books, 1986. Paperback First Edition Thus in USA [1986], so stated. First Edition Thus in USA [1986], so stated. Very Good+ in Wraps: shows indications of very careful use: just a hint of wear to the extremities; very mild rubbing to wrapper covers; the pages have tanned a bit, due to aging; the binding shows barely discernible lean, but remains perfectly secure; the previous owner has written her name and date and a very short note at the front endpaper, but the text is clean. Not perfectly, but remains close to 'As New'. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. 272 pages. Originally published in 1985 in Australia and in the same year in hardcover in the USA. Trade Paperback. A thoughtful and frequently uproariously funny book about an aspiring dramatist at a small college and the therapuetic effect her new play has on all who participate in it. So here's the story line: Trinity College hires novelist Alma Porch to teach a summer seminar at the school's Better Body Though the Arts program. Her students are all overweight women wanting to lose weight. However, her first day at the college starts off with a bang when Miss Porch rams into the back of bus leaving her vehicle disabled and escape futile. She meets her roommate Mrs. Castle who cannot take a breath without talking about her darling three grandchildren; who after fifteen minutes Miss Porch - and the reader - loathes sight unseen. She introduces her class (that seem to exclusively include gays and lesbians only) to what Miss Porch believes will soon be a classic drama, "Foxybaby" (that she is in the midst of writing), but insists the students will perform. The story line focuses on a sandwich generation single mom on the run with her child and her father. Although her preference is classical music like punk and hard rock to accompany her play, school director Mrs. Peycroft and her friend Miss Paisley intrude... This is a character study that uses hyperbole to satirize relationships. An Australian absurdist musing on relationships between lonely souls. The earlier books that I have read by Jolley, while a bit more boisterous in some ways than the works of her contemporaries in England, like Jane Gardam, Muriel Spark, Penelope Lively, and Beryl Bainbridge, seem to fit comfortably into the niche of polite satire occupied by these other, better known authors. With Foxybaby (1985), which follows Mr. Scobie's Riddle (1983)... and Miss Peabody's Inheritance (1984)..., however, Jolley permanently separates herself from her peers back in England, writing a book in which nothing is sacred, with characters who are sometimes crazy, usually self-absorbed, unashamedly venal, and often bawdy. She is realistic, if not enthusiastic, in her depiction of sex in all its variations as salve for the souls of the lonely and the sometimes bored. Nothing about this book is dainty or subtle. Elizabeth Jolley is clearly having great fun writing for the free, forgiving attitudes of Australia as she creates this over-the-top novel, filled with wild characters - some, like Porch, exceedingly repressed, while others may be taking part in this summer program so they can pursue their desires away from "civilization." Jolley's large cast of characters is well-choreographed to allow the farcical actions to proceed in many different directions at once, though the novel's focus and themes sometimes get lost in the confusion. The ironies of the "Foxybaby" play, with its strange and sexual subtexts, stereotyped characters, and clichéd action, are frequently matched with quotations from real literary sources - Sophocles, Goethe, Proverbs, Jon Dryden, Ibsen, Schopenhauer - providing "breadth" and "depth" to the action, but few readers will take these seriously. Ultimately, the novel connects the action in Porch's play with real life, and this is where everything spins wildly, and some might say, quite happily out of control.