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littleknownbooksTitle: The Complete Knowledge of Sally Fry
Author: Sylvia Murphy
ISBN: 0552990949/978-0552990943
I picked this up at a second-hand bookstall back when I was a student 20 years ago and I still re-read it regularly because it’s very funny and slyly observant of the foibles of its characters.
The story takes the form of a therapy technique involving "writing your own encyclopaedia": the Complete Knowledge of the title. In this case, it’s being written as a distraction by narrator Sally Fry, a single mother and sociology lecturer trying to finish her PhD by decamping to a cottage in Cornwall to be looked after by her own mother. Naturally, the rest of her family—her two sisters with their apparently "perfect" marriages, their husbands and children—end up descending on her, as does her own teenaged son who has gone off the rails with drugs.
The encyclopaedia framework is used really cleverly to build up the whole picture of Sally’s life and those of her family and academic colleagues, with us getting hints and bits and pieces of the story thrown in early on that are later picked up and elaborated on. There’s some nice digs at academia (and although the novel was published in the mid-80s, I don’t get the impression things have changed much!) and sibling rivalry.
It's currently out of print :( but I heartily recommend it if you can find a copy.
Author: Sylvia Murphy
ISBN: 0552990949/978-0552990943
I picked this up at a second-hand bookstall back when I was a student 20 years ago and I still re-read it regularly because it’s very funny and slyly observant of the foibles of its characters.
The story takes the form of a therapy technique involving "writing your own encyclopaedia": the Complete Knowledge of the title. In this case, it’s being written as a distraction by narrator Sally Fry, a single mother and sociology lecturer trying to finish her PhD by decamping to a cottage in Cornwall to be looked after by her own mother. Naturally, the rest of her family—her two sisters with their apparently "perfect" marriages, their husbands and children—end up descending on her, as does her own teenaged son who has gone off the rails with drugs.
The encyclopaedia framework is used really cleverly to build up the whole picture of Sally’s life and those of her family and academic colleagues, with us getting hints and bits and pieces of the story thrown in early on that are later picked up and elaborated on. There’s some nice digs at academia (and although the novel was published in the mid-80s, I don’t get the impression things have changed much!) and sibling rivalry.
It's currently out of print :( but I heartily recommend it if you can find a copy.