Madeleine st john biography

Madeleine St John (12 November 1941 – 18 June 2006) was an Australian writer, the first Australian woman to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.
Born in 1941 while her father was with the A.I.F.
Madeleine St John was an Australian writer, the first Australian woman to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.

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This is the first, and the definitive, biography of one of Australia’s most significant writers.

At the age of fifteen Madeleine saw herself as a painter and pianist, but Ms Medway peered down at Madeleine during her entrance interview in 1957 and announced: ‘You know dear, I think you might write.’

Madeleine would write. But not for some time. The Women in Black, a sparkling gem that belied the difficulties that had dogged her own life, was published when Madeleine St John was in her fifties. Her third novel, The Essence of the Thing, was shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize, and she continued to write until her death in 2006.

Helen Trinca has captured the troubled life of Madeleine St John in this moving account of a remarkable writer. After the death of her mother when Madeleine was just twelve, she struggled to find her place in the world. Estranging herself from her family, and from Australia, she lived for a time in the US before moving to London where Robert Hughes, Germaine Greer, Bruce Beresford, Barry Humphries and Clive James were making their mark. In 1993, when Th

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Keeping the darkness at bay: A Life of Madeleine St John

In 1997, the Booker Prize shortlist included a work by an Australian woman for the first time. Literary Australia was chuffed, but also surprised. Who was this Madeleine St John, published by Fourth Estate? Why had hardly anybody heard of her before, even though she had published two previous novels and received plaudits from Clive James, a contemporary from her Sydney University days? After some frantic reading, opinions began to be expressed. The overseas recognition meant that St John could not be totally dismissed, but demurrals were voiced nonetheless. The shortlisted novel, The Essence of the Thing, was not about Australia, far less the bush or heroic masculinity. It lacked self-importance and -indulgence – two things guaranteed, then and now, to gain critical approval. Oh, it was charmingly written, but a little on the slight side, perhaps?

To which the riposte might be: as slight as Jane Austen. St John certainly belongs to the same tradition. Her protagonists are detached, wry, catty observers with an indubitabl

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‘Madeleine: A Life of Madeleine St John’ by Helen Trinca

2013, 243 p.

The author of this biography, Helen Trinca, came to know of Madeleine St John through one of her books. So did I. For me it was The Women in Black, which I read back in 2011 as part of an online Australian Literature bookgroup and reviewed here. Erroneously suspecting that it was autobiographical, it seemed to me at the time to be a “happy, satisfying read” and “a small nugget of a book, affectionate, nostalgic and optimistic.” The film, The Ladies in Black (I hadn’t noticed the change in title before) was released in 2018, and it also struck me as a “feel-good, look-good” movie.

Having now read Trinca’s biography of St John, I couldn’t have been more wrong about The Women in Black being autobiographical. And if I found the book “affectionate, nostalgic and optimistic”, perhaps that says more about St John’s skill as a writer than anything else, because the author was certainly none of those things. Instead, sh