The End of the Morning

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>The never-before-published novel by Charmian Clift.</strong></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>'In those days the end of the morning was always marked by the quarry whistle blowing the noon knock-off.</em></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Since everybody was out of bed very early morning then was a long time or even if you came to think about it a round time - symmetrical anyway and contained under a thin radiant dome shaped cover...'</em></p><p>During the years of the Great Depression Cressida Morley and her eccentric family live in a weatherboard cottage on the edge of a wild beach. Outsiders in their small working-class community they rant and argue and read books and play music and never feel themselves to be poor. Yet as Cressida moves beyond childhood she starts to outgrow the place that once seemed the centre of the world. As she plans her escape the only question is: who will she become?</p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>The End of the Morning</em> is the final and unfinished autobiographical novel by Charmian Clift. Published here for the first time it is the book that Clift herself regarded as her most significant work. Although the author did not live to complete it the typescript left among her papers was fully revised and stands alone as a novella. It is published here alongside a new selection of Clift's essays and an afterword from her biographer Nadia Wheatley.</p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>'<em>The End of the Morning</em> is full of feeling animated by that formless aching questioning of childhood and a fascinating glimpse of the forces that shaped Clift as a person and a writer.' - Fiona Wright</strong></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>'Reading her even a glimpsed paragraph of her is like quaffing the finest champagne on earth.' - Peter Craven</strong> <strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)><em>Sydney Morning Herald</em></strong></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>'Forthright funny and with an indefinable flair Charmian Clift's writing plays second fiddle to nobody.' - Richard Cotter</strong> <strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)><em>Sydney Arts Guide</em></strong></p>