This is the story of a nineteen year old girl and the baby daughter she gave up for adoption. The nineteen year old was Charmian Clift; her baby daughter was Suzanne Chick. Charmian Clift was a novelist and essayist loved by thousands of Australians in the 1960s. To her public, her life seemed exotic, glamorous and full of romance: her blazing love affair with the (then married) writer George Johnston, which got them both sacked from the Melbourne "Argus" in 1946; her extraordinary good looks; her marriage to Johnston, and winning the "Sydney Morning Herald" literary prize with him in 1947 for "High Valley", the novel they wrote together; their move to London in 1951, and life amongst London's glitterati; and most famously, their life on the Greek islands of first Kalymnos and then Hydra, where they found poverty, scandal, and a measure of literary success. It was on Hydra that George wrote one of the best-loved Australian novels of all time, "My Brother Jack". In 1964 the family moved back to Australia, where Charmian began her weekly column for the "Sydney Morning Herald", which became compulsory reading for thousands.
But the truth was that Charmian's life was also marked by unhappiness - furious rows with George, too much drinking - and she committed suicide in 1969. How much of this unhappiness had its origins in the guilt she felt when hse gave her baby daughter up for adoption? Suzanne Chick embarks on a compelling journey to know and understand this fascinating, talented, apparently contradictory woman.
This is the story of a nineteen year old girl and the baby daughter she gave up for adoption. The nineteen year old was Charmian Clift; her baby daughter was Suzanne Chick. Charmian Clift was a novelist and essayist loved by thousands of Australians in the 1960s. To her public, her life seemed exotic, glamorous and full of romance: her blazing love affair with the (then married) writer George Johnston, which got them both sacked from the Melbourne "Argus" in 1946; her extraordinary good looks; her marriage to Johnston, and winning the "Sydney Morning Herald" literary prize with him in 1947 for "High Valley", the novel they wrote together; their move to London in 1951, and life amongst London's glitterati; and most famously, their life on the Greek islands of first Kalymnos and then Hydra, where they found poverty, scandal, and a measure of literary success. It was on Hydra that George wrote one of the best-loved Australian novels of all time, "My Brother Jack". In 1964 the family moved back to Australia, where Charmian began her weekly column for the "Sydney Morning Herald", which became compulsory reading for thousands.
But the truth was that Charmian's life was also marked by unhappiness - furious rows with George, too much drinking - and she committed suicide in 1969. How much of this unhappiness had its origins in the guilt she felt when hse gave her baby daughter up for adoption? Suzanne Chick embarks on a compelling journey to know and understand this fascinating, talented, apparently contradictory woman.
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