The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt

Longlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Literary Award

Tracy Farr's acclaimed debut novel is the fictional memoir of Dame Lena Gaunt: musician, octogenarian, junkie.

'Compelling reading' The Listener

I hold one regret from that day: that I put my first love, my cello, aside. But it was to take up a bigger love, a greater thing; it was to step into the future. Music's Most Modern Instrument. And I was to become Music's Most Modern Musician.

Tracy Farr's debut novel is the fictional memoir of Dame Lena Gaunt: musician, octogenarian, junkie. Documentary filmmaker Mo Patterson approaches veteran musician Lena Gaunt after watching her play at a festival in Perth: her first performance in 20 years.

While initially suspicious of Mo's intentions and reluctant to have her privacy invaded, Lena finds herself sharing stories from her past.

From a solitary childhood in Malacca and a Perth boarding school, to a glittering career in Jazz-age Sydney, to quiet domesticity in a New-Zealand backwater, Lena's is a life characterized by the pull of the sea, the ebb and flow of passion and loss, and her enduring relationship with that extraordinary instrument, the theremin.

Author: Tracy Farr
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Aardvark Bureau
Published: 05/10/2016
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.7lbs
Size: 7.80h x 5.10w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781910709054

About the Author

Tracy Farr is an Australian-born, New Zealand-based writer and former research scientist.

Her debut novel The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt was shortlisted for the 2014 WA Premier's Book Awards and the 2014 Barbara Jefferis Award, and longlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Tracy's short fiction has been published in anthologies, literary journals and popular magazines, and broadcast on Radio New Zealand. She won the 2014 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Award for her story Once had me, and other stories have been commended and shortlisted for awards in New Zealand and Australia.