‘As she explores the frailty of emotional experience, Farmer places her characters in a luminous domain of elemental sensual experience…’ — Cassandra Pybus

‘Beverley Farmer’s expansive curiosity and regard for microcosmic significance sharpen a reader’s attention to all things lived, dreamed, and observed.’ — Josephine Rowe

★The obsession and despair, loneliness and longing that arise from the end of an intimate relationship.
★This is an autobiographical novella, reworked a story which had appeared in Westerly (1968). It gives a sensitive portrayal of the breakup of a lesbian relationship.
★A new edition of Beverley Farmer's classic 1980 debut, out of print for many years.
★Dark and haunting this book riddled with poetry and quoted prose is spoken via our protagonist.

Alone captures the emergence of one of Australia’s most powerful and distinctive writers. Set in Melbourne in the late 1950s, and taking place over the course of two days and nights, Alone chronicles the feelings of obsession and hopelessness, isolation and desire provoked by the ending of an intimate relationship. A young woman, a fledgling writer, recalls her passion for her female lover, who has left her. She is estranged from her family and has dropped out of university, and is contemplating ending her life. As she travels through the night-time streets, industrial areas and boarding houses of a Melbourne fallen into economic depression and cultural malaise, she reflects on the days and months past that have brought her to despair. Written in a style threaded with gothic motifs, and shadowed by the constant threat of sexual violence, Beverley Farmer’s debut novel captures the romantic intensity and ironic reversals of youthful longing. It displays her remarkable capacity for bringing different forms of writing together in a single work, prose and poetry, dialogue and dramatic monologue, as well as her reflections on other writers’ work. Based partly on her own experiences, Alone shows the formation of a literary voice in writing that is both heightened and flowing, lyrical and precise.

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, was published by Giramondo in 2005. 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