Taking My Mother to the Opera

Overview

Piquant, frank, open, wistful, tender, funny … this personal memoir by Diane Brown is deftly 'marbled' throughout with social history. From carefully chosen anecdotes it slowly unfolds a vivid and compelling sense of character and the psychological dynamics within the family. Many readers will recognize the New Zealand so vividly portrayed here, as Brown marshals deeply personal events and childhood memories in a delightfully astute, understated poetic form.

Author Biography

Diane Brown is the author of two poetry books – Before the Divorce We Go to Disneyland and Learning to Lie Together; two novels – If the Tongue Fits and Eight Stages of Grace; a travel memoir, Liars and Lovers; and a prose/poetic work, Here Comes Another Vital Moment. She has received the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship, the Janet Frame Memorial Award and the Beatson Fellowship, and in 2013 was made a Member of New Zealand Order of Merit for services to writing and education. Diane lives in Dunedin with her husband, writer Philip Temple, and runs her own writing school, Creative Writing Dunedin.