Bite Your Tongue

Overview

Set in Queensland in the 1970s as well as contemporary times, this elegant mix of novel and memoir is in turn harrowing and delightful story. It threads together the childhood story of the fictional Glory Solider with the thoughts and experiences of the author, who examines her mother’s activism and copes with her death by asking Can a daughter forgive her mother for making her a pawn in her conservative moral crusades? Can greater understanding reinstate love? What does a mother owe a daughter and a daughter a mother? Ultimately a story of acceptance, this work encapsulates the deep bond that exists between a mother and her daughter.

Reviews

“What a potent mix: a daughter torn in her loyalties to her overbearing parent, and a mother hell-bent on getting to heaven by banning ungodly school texts. Rendle-Short traverses the remembered minefield with candor, grief, and something like wonder.”  —Cate Kennedy, author, The World Beneath

“This is a feisty, idiosyncratic, and original book full of weird energies and wonderful affections.”  —Gail Jones, author, Five Bells

"This is a book you may fall in love with, if you remember what it was like to have a moral mother and to be an outsider at school, or if you just value good writing and the uncensored expression of desire and difference."  —Christina Houen, Courier Mail

"For those seeking the transformative powers of literature, Bite Your Tongue will not disappoint."  —Donata Carrazza, Australian Book Review

Author Biography

Francesca Rendle-Short is an award-winning writer of fiction, nonfiction, essays, and poetry. She is the author of the novel Imago and the novella Big Sister. She is also the program director of creative writing at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.