“The Bone House is an extraordinary chronicle. I was surprised not to find it on Goodreads, but happy to add it myself. Three long essays, exploring the life of the body and the life of the mind, lyrical and persuasive, The Bone House cemented Farmer's reputation as one of Australia's finest writers. I hope this recommendation reaches out to readers who would not otherwise have come across it.”
——Dorothy Johnston，writer of “The Trojan Dog”

★Meditation on the extension of physical and spiritual life.
★A collection of three long essays on the life of the body and the life of the mind, lyrical and persuasive.
★Each essay based on a single theme and woven out of the same few elemental symbols of earth, and water, fire and blood, light and darkness.

What does art know that we do not? How does the image have such a hold on us all? Alongside the urge to grasp the world, to abstract and delve, is the urge to make our visions known, somehow to fix the moment in time in its fullness of meaning. In the essays, this hoard of moments takes the form of a mosaic, composed of myth, poetry and fable, of relics of the past, of explorations and illuminations and surface impressions. Set out like a commonplace book, they can be read in any sequence, or savoured for their detail.

Beverley Farmer (1941–2018)
Beverley Farmer was the author of four collections of short stories, including Milk, which won the NSW Premier’s Award for Fiction, and the writer’s notebook, A Body of Water. She was also the writer of the novels Alone, The Seal Woman and The House in the Light, this last title being shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. The Bone House, a collection of essays on the life of the body and the life of the mind. This Water: Five Tales was longlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize. It was her last work of fiction.

Loss features as a central theme in Farmer's stories. She described it as the "touchstone" of her work.The "experience of being foreign" was also favoured.

Awards and nominations:
1984 – New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction for Milk
1996 – The House in the Light was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award
2009 – Patrick White Award
2018 – This Water was long-listed for The Stella Prize

Mouths of gold
Seeing in the dark
Stone age
Sources
Acknowledgements