Ruby J. Murray

Just as well I don’t do my Best Books of the Year until it’s almost the end of the year…If it’s not too late, put this one on your list for Santa. Or beg for a book voucher to buy it…

The Biographer’s Lover is Ruby J. Murray’s second novel and I think it’s even better than her first, Running Dogs (2012) which was shortlisted in the NSW Premier’s awards and earned Murray the accolade of SMH Best Young Novelist.

Judging by its ubiquity in blurbs for commercial (so-called) women’s fiction, ‘secrets’ and The Big Reveal are a mainstay in publishing and there is a well-worn route to the kind of ‘secrets’ on offer. I would not have bought this book if ‘secrets’ had featured in its blurb so let me reassure readers that The Biographer’s Lover is not that kind of book, not at all. However I am going to be evasive about aspects of this most absorbing novel. When you read it you will understand why.

Carefully constructed in alternating short chapters as part biography, part story of how the biography came to be written, the novel tells the story of a forgotten (entirely fictional) woman artist called Edna Cranmer and her nameless biographer. When Edna dies, her daughter Victoria hires a ghost writer with a Master’s in art history to tell her story: the intention is to have Edna’s work recognised and the biography is part of a strategy to generate interest in the artist.

The biographer is down on her luck, writing dreary self-help books of the inane variety (’16 Tricks with Scarves’) and her agent sets up this project as a backdoor way of getting to write a sporting bio of Edna’s son Percy who is famous for playing football in AFL-mad Geelong. The Sydney Olympics are in sight, and the market for books about (male) sporting heroes is about to take off. Anne-Marie surmises that there would be more sales of a footy bio than one about a forgotten woman artist, and she is not best pleased when the biographer becomes intrigued by the project and sticks with it despite all kinds of problems, not the least of which is not having any money.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/12/15/the-biographers-lover-by-ruby-j-murray/… (more)